Nick Emmanwori’s second season with the Seahawks is starting to look less like a simple continuation and more like a live experiment.
Seattle already knew what it had when it got him with the 17th defensive pick in the 2025 NFL Draft. By the end of his rookie year, Emmanwori had finished second in defensive rookie of the year voting, trailing only Carson Schwesinger, the 16th defender selected.
For a player chosen at the start of Round 2, that was a massive return. It also made one thing obvious: Mike Macdonald had a type, and Emmanwori fit it almost perfectly.
Macdonald had already helped shape Kyle Hamilton into an All-Pro in Baltimore, and Emmanwori entered the league with the same kind of size, speed and physicality to play that kind of flexible, all-over-the-field role. In his first season, he looked like he could follow a similar path.
That path has not disappeared in 2026, but it has not been a straight line either. Emmanwori missed Week 1 with an injury and was limited in Weeks 2 and 3 before getting back to full strength in Week 4. Even so, Seattle has used him differently early this season, and that change is worth watching.
Last year, he spent about half his snaps in the slot and another third in the box, with around 12% at a more traditional defensive spot. He also saw a small number of snaps as a deep safety or outside corner.
That mix kept offenses guessing. They never knew where he would line up, and once the ball was snapped, they still had to deal with what he could do.
This year, the Seahawks have leaned even harder into what he can do near the line. Through six weeks, his snaps at edge rusher, slot corner and box safety have been split roughly into thirds, while deep safety and perimeter corner have shown up only rarely.
That usage makes some sense. Emmanwori is at his best when he is moving forward, not drifting backward.
But the edge rush work may be pushing it. Through the first five weeks - really about three and a half games because of the injury - he logged 47 edge snaps.
That included 18 of his 56 total snaps in Week 5 against the 49ers. For comparison, he had only 88 edge snaps all of last season.
The results have been mixed. Emmanwori is still making plays and creating more pass pressure because he is rushing far more often.
But his tackles, passes defended and even tackles for loss are down from last season, and his missed tackle rate has ticked up too. That is not shocking when a 220-pound defender is being asked to spend more time on the line against offensive tackles who can outweigh him by 100 pounds.
The grading numbers reflect that dip as well. His pass-rush grade has improved, but his overall Pro Football Focus grade has fallen from 71.0 last year to 57.6 this season, with run defense driving much of the decline.
There was at least one sign that Seattle may be pulling back a little. In Week 6, Emmanwori dropped to 13 edge snaps out of 58 total, while his box and slot work increased. The distribution looked much closer to what he did as a rookie, and he turned in his best game grade of the season.
There are a couple of ways to read all of this. One is that Macdonald and defensive coordinator Aden Durde are testing the ceiling of Emmanwori’s game early so they know exactly what he can handle when the season tightens up. The other is that the Seahawks are trying to patch together edge production after losing Boye Mafe.
Uchenna Nwosu and Demarcus Lawrence are still performing at a high level, but Derick Hall has not grown into a bigger role, and Seattle does not have the fourth edge it had a year ago. Dante Fowler has not done much, and Connor O’Toole has barely been on the field. In that setting, it is easy to understand why the Seahawks would ask Emmanwori to help.
The question is whether they should keep asking so much of him there. He is explosive downhill and can wreck a play when he’s close to the action, but his best lane may be just off the line rather than buried in it, where bigger blockers have a tougher time locking on.
Macdonald should have no trouble sorting through the tradeoffs. He is not going to take Emmanwori completely out of those edge looks, especially when he can blow up protections and create chaos. But it also does not sound like Seattle plans to leave him there long enough for offenses to solve the puzzle.
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