Quandre Diggs has become the Seahawks’ premier (and only) ballhawk

The Seattle Seahawks defense is bad.

You know who isn’t bad? In fact, you know who is very good? Quandre Diggs.

I don’t particularly care that Matthew Stafford made a terrible decision here. This is still not an easy pick to make when you consider Diggs still has to track the ball down and has to keep his feet in bounds like he’s a wide receiver.

Diggs has both of the Seahawks’ interceptions on the season. He has four of the team’s last six interceptions dating back to last season. And all he cost was a 5th-round pick because the Detroit Lions have a surplus on sadness and incompetence.

If there is any player on the post-Legion of Boom secondary who would most closely fit into the prime Legion of Boom years, it’s Diggs. He is a heavy hitter (sometimes straying beyond the rules) with a nose for the ball.

To put into perspective just how well Diggs makes plays, he is already tied for 4th in interceptions among all Seahawks players in the Pete Carroll era. It is a near certainty that he’ll finish above everyone except Richard Sherman and Earl Thomas.

Stathead

Diggs is also tied for 3rd on the team in passes defensed since he joined midway through 2019, only behind Shaquill Griffin and K.J. Wright.

The most astonishing part of this statistic is that he has only played in 26 regular season games! And during that specific 26-game span he has as many interceptions as the rest of the Seahawks secondary (past and present) combined.

Among all safeties, only Tyrann Mathieu has more interceptions than him since 2019. I know he’s received a few gifts to add to that count and interceptions aren’t the primary metric for great safety play (ahem)Brian Russell(ahem), but absolutely no one else on the Seahawks secondary is anywhere near Diggs’ level of ball skills. The one area where Quandre hasn’t really shown up is fumbles (1 forced and recovered) but otherwise he is responsible for about 25% of the team’s takeaways and about 40% of the total interceptions since the trade.

Just imagine for one brief second that this current iteration of the Seahawks defense had a starting free safety who couldn’t generate takeaways.

In summation: Pay Quandre Diggs.