Rasheem Green looks ahead of schedule

“Frolf. Frisbee golf, Jerry. Golf with a frisbee. This is gonna be my time. Time to taste the fruits and let the juices drip down my chin. I proclaim this: The Summer of George!”

Where were you on the night that the classic Seinfeld episode, “The Summer of George,” the season eight finale, aired? At least 20 million Americans were at home, watching it live on TV. I’m sure many of you didn’t care. And surely some of you were not born yet, or were too young to know what a Seinfeld even is. “What’s the deal with Seinfeld?” But for Rasheem Green’s parents, that night they probably weren’t watching TV.

They were saying, “What’s the deal with this baby of ours who was born today?”

Word for word, I bet they said that.

It’s fascinating to get to this stage in my life now where there are NFL players who were born at times that didn’t seem that long ago, because I wasn’t that young when Seinfeld was in its eighth season. I know that many people are also reading this thinking, “Kid, I watched the first season of the Seattle Seahawks, in person, with tickets I bought because I was an adult with a job!” But Green, 21, is now in the NFL, proving that we are getting closer and closer to the first 21st century baby to turn pro.

So far in his first year with the Seahawks, Green is no baby.

The now-looking-significant injury to Dion Jordan (“What’s the Dion with Jordan?”) has pushed Green into a starting role at defensive end in training camp, while a sidelined Frank Clark has only put more pressure on the third round pick from USC to bear a heavy load for Seattle on the defensive line. The idea that Green, one of the youngest players in the draft, could be a notable piece of the defense in 2018 was not one at the forefront of many people’s minds when the Seahawks selected him (which was only possible thanks to the trade down on day one, but let’s keep pretending like John Schneider is flat-out bad at drafting), but now you have to wonder if he’ll just keep the job regardless.

Green’s drawn rave reviews in practice.

That showed up in his NFL preseason debut on Thursday night (spoiler alert provided by McKenna in the tweet above) when he produced a solo sack of Andrew Luck early and then combined for one with fellow 2018 draft class pick Jacob Martin. It is worth noting that his sack of Luck came against Joe Haeg at left tackle and not Anthony Castonzo, but Green still did just about everything right on Thursday. And against better tackles, he could remain effective based on what we’ve seen.

And here he is helping the Seahawks recover a fumble for a touchdown by jumping on quarterback Brad Kaaya:

“What’s the steal with touchdowns?”

By all accounts, Green had a good night. With Jordan likely out for an extended period of time, and Seattle already thin at defensive end with Barkevious Mingo and Martin now both seemingly moving up from linebacker to help in that area, leaving Shaquem Griffin and others (“What’s the Beal, Emmanuel?”) to man the middle-outside of the defense, Green’s advanced learning pace is coming at just the right time.

There’s still three preseason weeks and plenty of practices left to go, and who knows how he will fare against typical starting left tackles (the Broncos, Bears, and Cowboys — Seattle’s first three opponents — could all have capable-to-elite offensive tackles), but this is way sooner than Green was expected to play, and way sooner than he was expected to be this effective.

Who knows, this might just be The Winter of Green.