The Seattle Seahawks will break camp with veterans Bobby Wagner and K.J. Wright pencilled in as their starting middle and WILL linebacker, together for the eighth year in a row.
Mychal Kendricks will start in Week 1 at the SAM linebacker spot, and should be the team’s regular starter all season if he can avoid a prison sentence.
That gives Seattle perhaps the deepest group of linebackers in the NFL – and that isn’t even counting rookie Cody Barton, who continued to impress just about everyone with his maturity, intelligence and play on the field since he’s put on a Seahawks uniform.
“He’s special,” defensive coordinator Ken Norton, Jr. commented on Thursday. “He’s really smart. You can’t give him enough information. He’s always trying to get more and more. He has this great ability to take all the information and make it work for him on the field at a very young age. Usually rookies have a little slower process of diagnosing and understanding. He’s sharp, he’s quick. He’s going to help us out early.”
Barton came to Seattle as a third round pick out of the University of Utah. He played primarily middle linebacker with the Utes, but has played a little bit of everywhere in his time with the Seahawks.
He was one of the highest graded performers in the team’s preseason victory over the Broncos, according to Pro Football Focus, earning an overall grade of 85.3 across 23 snaps.
Despite how quickly he is picking things up, Barton figures to contribute primarily on the special teams this season, while he hones his craft learning from the best in the game in Wagner and Wright.
Barton will no doubt be a big piece of Seattle’s defense for years to come, and a chance to learn from someone like Wagner will only help make him the best player he can be – especially since he’s already demonstrated that he is a quick learner.
