Field Gulls
Throughout the 2025 NFL season, SB Nation’s Doug Farrar will write about the game’s Secret Superstars — those players whose performances might slip under the radar for whatever reasons. In this installment, it’s time to recognize Seattle Seahawks linebacker Ernest Jones, who has become the heart of Seattle’s new Legion of Boom-ish defense, and the franchise’s most important player at his position since Bobby Wagner.
The home of the NFL’s best defense may change from week to week in the 2025 season (is it in Jacksonville? Atlanta? Seattle?), but one requirement transcends geography: These great defenses must have tone-setting linebackers. That’s true of Jacksonville’s Devin Lloyd, it’s true of Atlanta’s Divine Deablo (which the Falcons discovered the hard way when Deablo was injured last Sunday against the San Francisco 49ers), and it’s true of Seattle’s Ernest Jones.
Of the NFL’s current franchise-defining ‘backers, Jones has among the most circuitous career paths. Selected with the 103rd pick in the third round of the 2021 draft out of South Carolina, Jones became a starter early in his NFL career, and he logged a sack, four pressures, four solo tackles, two stops, and a pass breakup in the Rams’ 23-20 Super Bowl LVI win over the Cincinnati Bengals.
Not bad for a rookie.
From there though, things didn’t quite work out as anybody might have hoped. The Rams traded Jones to the Tennessee Titans before the 2024 season, and after six games and five starts there, Tennessee traded Jones to the Seattle Seahawks on October 23, 2024 for linebacker Jerome Baker and a 2025 fourth-round draft pick that was ultimately spent on Texas tight end Gunnar Helm.
In his 667 snaps with the Seahawks in 2024, Jones had a sack, nine pressures, 61 solo tackles, 29 stops, a forced fumble, and in coverage, he allowed 31 catches on 39 targets for 296 yards, 171 yards after the catch, one touchdown, one interception, one pass breakup, and an opponent passer rating of 96.2.
That poked the Seahawks, who had been looking for such a linebacker since Bobby Wagner’s salad days (Remember Jordyn Brooks? Woof.) to give Jones a new three-year, $28.5 million contract with $15 million guaranteed. Based on Jones’ performance so far in 2025, that’s a serious bargain. Through Seattle’s first seven games of the new season, Jones has a sack, five pressures, 41 solo tackles, 18 stops. and he’s allowed 25 catches on 34 targets for 310 yards, 15 yards after the catch, one touchdown, three interceptions, one pass breakup, and an opponent passer rating of 73.3.
Jones’ interception of C.J. Stroud with 14:14 left in the third quarter of Seattle’s 27-10 Monday night win was one of a number of examples you can point to of his ability to be in the right place at the right time — even when the form isn’t 100 percent. The Seahawks hurried Stroud with a dual cornerback blitz in which Josh Jobe and Riq Woolen added to the pressure, while Jones headed up the...
