Tag: Seahawks UDFAs

Seahawks DT Jonah Tavai named top undrafted player to watch

Doug Farrar at Touchdown Wire has named Tavai his top undrafted free agent to watch in 2023.

The Seahawks seem to be absolutely obsessed with turning over their interior defensive line this offseason. While they passed on Jalen Carter at No. 5 overall in the draft, most of this team’s energy has gone into improving and reshaping that underperforming iDL unit.

Yesterday, the team added three more interior defensive linemen to their roster: former Raiders defensive end Mario Edwards Jr., former Chargers nose tackle Forrest Merrill and former Seattle Sea Dragons DL Austin Faoliu. The team also has some interesting undrafted free agent defensive linemen. In fact some believe they have the best UDFA class this year by a wide margin.

Perhaps the most-intriguing guy in the group is San Diego State defensive tackle Jonah Tavai. Doug Farrar at Touchdown Wire has named Tavai his top 2023 undrafted free agent to watch.

“I’m highly intrigued by San Diego State defensive lineman Jonah Tavai, who landed with the Seahawks. Last season, he led all FBS interior defensive linemen with 12 sacks and 69 total pressures, and he wasn’t doing it all against lower-level competition — there’s enough “like as like” tape to make you think that Tavai can be pretty disruptive at the NFL level, as well.”

Tavai’s numbers in college were undeniably impressive and we are expecting him to be one of the UDFAs who wind up making the initial 53-man roster. Seeing is believing though, so here is a look at Tavai’s 2022 highlight reel.

Seahawks initial 53-man roster projection before OTAs

Seahawks named biggest winners in undrafted free agency

The Seahawks are also getting very high marks for the crop of players they signed as undrafted free agents.

The Seahawks came out of the 2023 NFL draft with a strong class of rookies but also 28 open roster spots to fill. Right now, it looks like most of those openings are going to be occupied by undrafted free agents. For one thing, Seattle simply doesn’t have the cap space to afford any veterans.

On the positive side of the ledger, the Seahawks are also getting very high marks for the crop of players they signed as undrafted free agents. Specifically, Thor Nystrom at Fantasy Pros has a new ranking of the top UDFA classes in the NFC and he has Seattle on top by a very wide margin.

“The Seahawks were the big winners of this year’s UDFA free-for-all… The Seahawks signed 23 UDFA that I had rankings on pre-draft, tying for the NFL-lead. But the quality was even better than the quantity – Seattle’s signing of 17 players on my 500-player big board easily led the NFL. In my ranking system, there was a larger qualitative difference between Seattle’s UDFA class and the No. 2 class (Tampa Bay) than four different franchises’ UDFA groups scored in sum.”

There’s still been no official confirmation from the team about signing them, but reports have Seattle picking up 28 new college free agents. Fans should not be surprised if most of them wind up making the initial 53-man roster.