Ok, so we Seattle fans are coming off a bye week and thus there is no gameball to be awarded. With that in mind, I've decided to award a gameball to a player that has played well but has mostly gone under the radar thus far this season: Max Unger.
I feel like there were a lot of doubts here about how the former 2nd rounder out of Oregon would fare this season and thus far I think he's proven a lot of those doubters wrong. There were concerns that he gets bullrushed at the line too often and isn't big enough to play lineman in this league.
I'll be the first to acknowledge that I'm not an expert at evaluating offensive line play, but Unger's play has been conspicuously solid yet rather not-talked-about for the most part and his play and leadership as the center has been a big part of this offensive line's improvement from week to week. Now, is this line great? No, especially not if you're looking at the numbers, skewed badly by the first few weeks of play.
Have they improved though? I think so. The pass protection has improved, the run blocking has improved, and there's no doubt that a lot of that stems from increased comfort on Unger's part in making the correct assignment calls and recognizing defenses. Obviously, it's early in the season and the sample size is small, but we've seen a significant improvement in offensive line play each week so I'm giving one gameball to Unger for his central role in this (get it? Central?).
Now I want to open it up to you. I know there are some differing opinions out there on this. It is ridiculous of me to think that Unger has played well? Is it ridiculous to think this line is just going to get better? What are you guys seeing?