Jarran Reed Injury Leaves Big Shoes to Fill on Seahawks’ Defensive Front
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Seattle Seahawks defensive end Mike Morris (94) against the Arizona Cardinals at State Farm Stadium. Credit: Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images [/caption]
Like most teams in the NFL by the midway point of the season, the Seattle Seahawks have endured their share of injuries, particularly in the secondary where cornerback Devon Witherspoon and safety Julian Love have each missed five games apiece.
However, while the defensive backfield has been ravaged by injury issues in the first nine weeks of the 2025 campaign, the Seahawks have benefited from great fortune along the defensive line. All five of their projected starters - Leonard Williams, Byron Murphy II, Jarran Reed, Uchenna Nwosu, and Demarcus Lawrence - have started at least seven of the team’s eight games thus far with the unit enjoying a fantastic run of health.
Unfortunately, that spell of good luck finally came to a crashing halt for Seattle on Saturday. Despite practicing in full all week with wrist and thumb injuries and not even being listed on Friday’s final report, the team added Reed on the day before their NFC West rematch, ruling him out for the contest. Shortly after that initial announcement, news broke that the veteran had been placed on injured reserve, meaning he would be required to miss at least the next four games.
Reed may not be the biggest star on the Seahawks’ defensive line and he’s probably the third best interior defensive lineman on the roster with Williams and Murphy II playing starring roles in the trenches with flashier pass rushing numbers. But there’s no sugarcoating it: losing the highly regarded veteran for at least a month serves as a major blow for a defensive line with underlying depth concerns that could now potentially rise to the surface going into a critical stretch of the season.
Leading up to Sunday’s second battle with Arizona, Seattle has been quite reliant on its “Big 3” of Williams, Murphy, and Reed in the middle, as all three players have logged at least 262 defensive snaps through the first eight games. Williams and Murphy have each seen the field for at least 65% of the team’s snaps, while Reed sits just below the 50% threshold.
There’s no question Williams, Murphy, and Reed have made the most of that extensive playing time, serving as anchors for the NFL’s fifth-ranked scoring defense and second-ranked run defense. For their part, Williams and Murphy have produced 55 pressures and nine sacks, ranking in the top 20 among defensive linemen in pressures and top 10 in sacks. To go with his invaluable leadership role in the locker room, Reed has been a rock defending the run, posting no missed tackles while regularly eating up double teams and adding 1.5 sacks and four quarterback hits for good measure.
Rotating those three players has allowed Seahawks coach Mike Macdonald and defensive coordinator Aden Durde to minimize the number of snaps needed from others on the defensive line, which can be viewed both as a blessing and a curse.
On one hand, few teams in the league have a better trifecta to roll out on game day than Williams, Murphy, and Reed, blending experience and upside for a core offering great versatility and complementary skill sets. It would be questioned if the coaching staff wasn’t using them the vast majority of the time. But with that, Seattle hasn’t had another defensive tackle on the team play more than 99 snaps, with Mike Morris leading the pack with a 17% snap share and Brandon Pili sitting at 11%, and those stats have been skewed by blowout wins against New Orleans and Washington where backups played a bunch in the fourth quarter.
Now in his third season out of Michigan, Morris has been stout as a rotational run defender for the Seahawks, as Pro Football Focus grades him out as the third-best (78.0) on the team in that category behind linebacker Ernest Jones and safety Nick Emmanwori. Even with limited playing time, he has been credited with five run stops and an impressive 12.8% run stop rate, which ranks fifth in the NFL among defensive tackles with at least 35 run defense reps.
But while Morris has made substantial strides stuffing the run as a multi-faceted defensive lineman who can play 3-tech defensive tackle as well as 5-tech defensive end and as a two-point outside linebacker in a pinch, he has yet to offer Seattle much as a pass rushing contributor. Offering minimal punch harassing quarterbacks, his 7.8% Pass Rush Win Rate sits 66th out of 134 qualified defensive linemen and he has generated a mere five pressures and a quarterback hit on 59 rush attempts.
Away from Morris, Pili has been an even bigger non-factor as a pass rusher with a 5.7% Pass Rush Win Rate that ranks 109th overall. He does have three tackles and a run stop on 27 rushing plays and did force an unexpected fumble on special teams against the Commanders in Week 9, so he has provided positive play in other ways, but the Seahawks shouldn’t be expecting much from him beyond early downs as a run stuffer who helps keep linebackers clean. The same likely can be said for Quinton Bohanna, who will suit up for his second game off the practice squad on Sunday and has a grand total of six pressures in five NFL seasons.
If there’s an X-factor worth keeping tabs on while Reed recovers from injury, the Seahawks have yet to truly throw undrafted rookie Jared Ivey into the fire. After the ex-Ole Miss standout impressed throughout training camp and the preseason, he earned a spot on the initial 53-man roster, but he has been a healthy scratch in six of the first eight games with 15 total defensive snaps in the regular season. At 6-6, 285 pounds, similar to Morris, he has the size to reduce inside to 3-tech alignment while also being athletic enough to slide outside, offering the flexibility Macdonald covets up front.
It remains to be seen whether Ivey’s pass rushing production in Oxford - he had 12.5 sacks in his final two collegiate seasons - will translate to the NFL on Sundays, but he did produce four pressures and a sack in the preseason. There’s enough intrigue to suggest that he could be a valuable passing down option over the next four weeks and in the process develop enough with on-field experience to be counted on as a reserve in the final stretch run in December and January.
For better or worse, there won’t be a lengthy landing strip for Morris, Pili, Bohanna, and Ivey, as all four will be counted on to play substantial snaps against the Cardinals on Sunday. An even bigger test awaits the following week on the road against the 6-2 Rams in a game that holds incredible significance in the NFC West title race, while another playoff hopeful in the Vikings will come to town two weeks later in what could be the final game until Reed returns. That’s far from an easy slate.
Nonetheless, with veteran nose tackle Johnathan Hankins and fifth-round pick Rylie Mills not likely to return from injury in the near future as additional reinforcements, the Seahawks will need at least one of the aforementioned players to emerge in the trenches without Reed available for the foreseeable future. On the plus side, as safety Ty Okada has done in Love’s absence and Derion Kendrick did replacing Witherspoon earlier in the season, injuries present opportunity and Macdonald will be expecting several defenders delivering at the plate when called to bat in similar fashion.
As great as Williams and Murphy are, the team can’t play them at an 80% or higher clip for multiple games and expect them not to wear down and/or get hurt themselves, and someone has to help fill the gap literally and figuratively. Coaches can’t give into the temptation to overwork those two horses up front, making the search for quality reps behind them now the biggest storyline for Seattle moving into the second half of the season.
