Tag: Julian Love

Giants preparing to face off with former captain, Julian Love

The New York Giants are preparing to square off against their friend and former captain, Seattle Seahawks safety Julian Love, in Week 4.

When the New York Giants look across the field on Monday night, looking back at them will be former friend and team captain, Julian Love.

Although he was offered a deal, the Giants and Love could not come to an agreement this offseason and he ultimately landed with the Seattle Seahawks. The departure came as a surprise and through three weeks of the season, it sure seems like the Giants could use the versatile safety.

Instead, Love is now the enemy and his former teammates, some of whom are still close with the 25-year-old, expect him to spill the beans on Wink Martindale’s defense.

“I hope not, but then again at the same time that’s the team he’s with and at the end of the day he’s going to do what he needs to do for them to get the best chance to win,” cornerback Adoree’ Jackson told reporters on Tuesday. “As a person, knowing, playing with him, I hope he wouldn’t but at the end of the day that’s his new team, that’s who his loyalty is with so I’m just excited to see him and play.”

Jackson said he hasn’t talked to Love this week with a game looming, but other Giants haven’t gone radio silent.

Safety Xavier McKinney got together with Love for a game of 2K just a few short days ago.

“Yeah, I was actually just playing a game with him (on Sunday). We were on 2K,” McKinney said. “But yeah, man, I mean, I miss him, playing next to him, he’s a good friend of mine. We were teammates. He’s a great guy. Great dude. It’s going to be fun being able to play against him.

“Obviously, I was able to play alongside of him. So now, we’re going to be competing and going against each other this coming Monday. It’s going to be fun, but at the end of the day, we’re still brothers. We talk. It’ll be good though.”

Meanwhile, the man who replaced Love, safety Jason Pinnock, views Monday night as an opportunity to define himself; to prove the Giants made the right choice and are now in better hands.

“I don’t think I’m filling in a role, I think it’s a new role, I think it’s me,” Pinnock told the New York Post. “I’m me, my play, my style, that’s me. It’s not Julian Love Jr.”

Pinnock certainly seems motivated by this came but you had better believe Love will be, too.

[lawrence-related id=716194,716184,716186]

3 Seahawks are the lowest-grades safeties in the NFL according to PFF

Diggs could be talking about any number of people, but our best guess is that he’s upset with the folks over at Pro Football Focus.

Seahawks free safety Quandre Diggs seems to have a bone to pick with some unnamed people who judge players despite not knowing assignments and game-planning.

Here’s what he shared on Twitter yesterday morning.

Diggs could be talking about any number of people, but our best guess is that he’s upset with the folks over at Pro Football Focus, who have graded him out horribly so far this season.

According to PFF’s current grades, Diggs is at 30.1 overall with a poor 48.4 grade in run defense and an atrocious 37.0 mark in coverage. Diggs isn’t alone in this department, either. In fact, two of his teammates have also gotten extremely negative grades from PFF in 2023.

Julian Love is currently graded out even worse than Diggs in coverage at 30.7. That makes him the only NFL safety who’s rated worse than Diggs with 11 or more snaps this year.

Coby Bryant also has a putrid grade, and these three are the three lowest-graded safeties in the league through two weeks:

via PFF
via PFF

So, do the Seahawks have literally the three worst safeties in the NFL right now? Of course not. This is clearly about something Seattle’s defense is doing.

Perhaps the problem is that the team’s lack of a pass rush up front is putting a lot of pressure on the back end of their defense in general. In Week 1 against LA in particular Seattle played a lot of soft zone concepts, leaving their DBs out to dry as Matt Stafford shredded them over and over while rarely getting so much as a whiff of pressure. Things were better in Week 2 against the Lions, but clearly PFF doesn’t like what they’ve seen so far.

Not everyone agrees with their analysis, though. For what it’s worth, according to Pro Football Reference Diggs has only been targeted twice this year and hasn’t allowed a catch. They also have him credited with only one missed tackle, while PFF has him with four. We wouldn’t presume to understand modern coverages, but they can’t both be right.

More Seahawks Wire stories

Fans afraid of losing to Andy Dalton again

4 best prop bets for Seahawks, Panthers

Updated depth chart plus practice squad

Ranking all 32 starters by their QBR

4 key Seahawks players to watch vs. Rams in Week 1

Who will stand out the most in the season opener?

It’s almost here. After months of waiting, the NFL regular season is merely days away from officially kicking off. The Seattle Seahawks start their 2023 campaign where they ended their 2022 season – at home against the Los Angeles Rams.

Seattle swept the downtrodden Rams for the first time since the 2013 Super Bowl season, but it was not a cakewalk for them. The Seahawks had to grind out two hard-fought wins, including a 19-16 win in overtime for the regular season finale. It would be foolish to think Week 1 will be any different for Seattle.

The Rams are going to come out firing, rejuvenated from their atrocious championship-defense season. If the Seahawks want to start the season 1-0 (and a third-straight win over LA) they’re going to need certain players to step up. Here are a few to keep an eye on in Week 1.

Updated Seahawks safety depth chart with Jamal Adams returning

Here’s our best estimate at what the team’s lavish depth chart at safety looks like following Adams’ return.

Jamal Adams will be returning to the Seattle Seahawks this week, nearly one full year removed from the quad injury that claimed all but a few snaps of his 2022 season. Today, the team announced that Adams passed his physical and will be joining walk-throughs soon.

Here’s our best estimate at what the team’s lavish depth chart at safety looks like following Adams’ return.

  • Quandre Diggs
  • Jamal Adams
  • Julian Love
  • Coby Bryant*
  • Jerrick Reed II
  • Jonathan Sutherland
  • Joey Blount
  • Ty Okada

From top to bottom, this is arguably the deepest safety room in the entire league. It had better be, since the Seahawks are spending about $10 million more than any other team at this spot.

*Coby Bryant is playing nickel while first-round draft pick Devon Witherspoon is out but has been mostly at safety this offseason.

More Seahawks Wire stories

5 takeaways from Wednesday’s Seahawks practice

Seahawks 90-man roster tracker: Preseason Week 3

Three Seahawks defenders attempted to draw the team logo

Love has since shared his regret over the drawing.

Some professional football players are incredibly talented human beings all around. There are even some real artists around the league. Christian McCaffrey plays piano and the Eagles offensive line has a Christmas album, to name a few. We can probably count out these three Seahawks defenders from having a future in painting, though.

Yesterday Mina Kimes shared a screenshot from Instagram of three drawings – one from Coby Bryant, another from Dre’Mont Jones and one from Julian Love – all trying to capture Seattle’s team logo. Observe.

Sadly, it seems that Jones was the closest to the mark, here. At least Bryant got the general shape of the logo right, but there really aren’t any redeeming qualities for Love’s angry duck having an orgasm.

Love has since shared his regret over the drawing.

As for their day jobs, Jones and Love will both be in the starting lineup come Week 1. Meanwhile, Bryant has moved from slot corner to safety, so he’ll be backing up Love, Quandre Diggs and Jamal Adams when he returns.

More Seahawks Wire stories

Madden 24 ratings for every Seahawks player in the game

Seahawks announce 7 moves going into Preseason Week 2

Madden got Seahawks safety Julian Love right this year

EA has recovered their fumble on Love’s player likeness from last year.

With the release of Madden 24 this week, Seahawks safety Julian Love took to Twitter to evaluate his player replica. A clear improvement in game graphics for this year’s release is expected. However, what wasn’t expected was the stark contrast between Love’s player last year and this year.

One of Seattle’s top free agent signings in 2023, Love played 16 games for the Giants last season, finishing with 67 solo tackles, two interceptions and one forced fumble. From the look of things, EA has recovered their own fumble on Love’s player likeness from last year.

Take a look at the difference between the two here:

Love’s overall player rating improved from 76 to 80 and his more refined player model features him with an actual beard, accurate skin pigmentation and game sleeves. Love’s role for Seattle may include coming in on Big Nickel 3-3-5 formation packages and playing as a relief to safeties Jamal Adams (when healthy) and Quandre Diggs. Until Adams returns to the field, Love will be starting next to Diggs.

More Seahawks Wire stories

Seahawks complete player ratings for Madden 24

Tyler Lockett highest rated Seattle player on Madden

Seahawks 2023 training camp: Sights and sounds from practice No. 14

Here are some videos from the beat reporters who were at Sunday’s practice at the team facility.

Practice No. 14 on the Seattle Seahawks’ 2023 training camp schedule is in the books. As is appropriate, wide receiver DK Metcalf had a strong day working with starting quarterback Geno Smith, according to observers.

Here are some videos from the beat reporters who were at Sunday’s practice at the team facility.

Mark Schlereth: Seahawks DBs deeper than the Legion of Boom

It may sound like blasphemy, but he’s right, keeping in mind that depth wasn’t what made the LOB great.

Yesterday Mark Schlereth was a guest on the Brock and Salk show and made some interesting comments regarding the Seahawks’ roster. For one thing, Schlereth thinks Seattle’s current secondary is deeper than the Legion of Boom was. Watch.

It may sound like blasphemy, but he’s right, keeping in mind that depth wasn’t what made the LOB great – it was three Hall of Famers along with a rotating cast of mostly-forgettable DBs. Brandon Browner, Byron Maxwell and Jeremy Lane all had their good qualities, but there’s a reason why people only think of Earl Thomas, Kam Chancellor and Richard Sherman when they hear LOB.

Meanwhile, this current Seahawks secondary has three Pro-Bowlers in Riq Woolen, Jamal Adams and Quandre Diggs. They also have a top-five overall pick in Devon Witherspoon, two respectable corners in Tre Brown and Mike Jackson, a Jim Thorpe award winner with Coby Bryant and the remarkably underrated safety Julian Love.

There are better secondary units around the NFL, but this one has a chance to earn the title of the deepest in the league.

More Seahawks Wire stories

40 Seahawks players who should make the initial 53-man roster

Sights and sounds from Tuesday’s training camp practice

8 things we learned from first unofficial depth chart of 2023

6 key players the Seahawks should rest during preseason

Seahawks 2023 training camp: 5 takeaways from Tuesday’s practice

Here are five takeaways from the media members on-site.

The Seattle Seahawks have wrapped up another training camp practice. Today’s session at the VMAC was the team’s sixth since the start of camp and the second day of full pads.

Here are five takeaways from the media members on-site.

200 more photos from Seahawks 2023 training camp

NFL.com ranks Seahawks safety group best in the league

The Seahawks are spending far more than any other NFL team at the safety position this year

[anyclip pubname=”2123″ widgetname=”0016M00002U0B1kQAF_M8169″]

The Seahawks are spending far more than any other NFL team at the safety position this year, so it only makes sense to have the best group in the leauge at this position. That doesn’t always happen when a team goes out of their way to splurge at a particular spot, but in this case Seattle does stand alone at the top of the heap at safety.

Over the weekend Bucky Brooks at NFL.com ranked the best combinations at every position group in the game. The Seahawks were shut out right until the very end, where they nabbed the No. 1 ranking at safety with Quandre Diggs, Jamal Adams and Julian Love. Here’s what Brooks had to say about Seattle’s vaunted safety trio.

“The Seahawks’ revamped secondary will allow Pete Carroll to tap into the complementary skills of his veteran safety trio. Diggs, Love — a free-agent addition — and Adams can create big plays in the deep middle, slot or inside the box. Moreover, the unit’s versatility and overall awareness… give the Seahawks the potential to create the second coming of the Legion of Boom. Adams missed all but one game last season with a torn quad muscle, but if he returns to form as an All-Pro safety who thrives as a pass rusher, the Seahawks will have the league’s best combination of playmakers at safety.

This group could have been even deeper, but the Seahawks decided to let restricted free agent Ryan Neal walk so he’d have the opportunity to start elsewhere. He has since signed with the Buccaneers.

More Seahawks Wire stories

Ranking the top 25 tight ends in the NFL

Seahawks Mt. Rushmore: Wide receivers