Tyrice Knight is making a case in Seahawks camp, and the push he’s creating feels a lot like the path Coby Bryant once carved in Seattle.
Bryant is gone now, having landed with the Chicago Bears after earning a major new deal in free agency this past offseason. But the through line between the two players is hard to miss: both arrived as useful pieces, both hit some turbulence, and both may have ended up being more valuable once the Seahawks found the right way to deploy them.
The positions are different, naturally. Bryant came in as a defensive back; Knight is an inside linebacker.
But the career shape has some familiar edges. Bryant was a full-time starter for nearly half of his rookie season in 2022 as a slot corner, then slipped into a much smaller role in his second year, partly because of injuries.
He started only two games and didn’t make the same kind of impact.
That changed in his third season. Bryant became a starter at safety and held that job through 2025, giving Seattle a versatile defender who could make plays on the ball and stay steady in just about every phase of the game. That production eventually priced him out of Seattle, and the Bears gave him the kind of contract that reflected it.
Knight’s trajectory has been a little different, but the pattern is close enough to raise eyebrows. He became a starter midway through his rookie season, then saw his role shrink in year two when Drake Thomas passed him on the depth chart.
Thomas was better in most areas, especially in pass coverage, and that matters in a Mike Macdonald defense. An inside linebacker doesn’t stay on the field in that system unless he can hold up in coverage.
Still, Knight is turning heads again in camp, and this time he’s doing more than just hanging around the roster conversation. He has looked better than he has before, and Macdonald has taken notice.
Speaking to the media after practice on Thursday, the head coach said of Knight, "He has been having a great camp. There are ways to get him out there. He is definitely applying pressure right now, which is great."
That last part matters. It suggests the Seahawks may be looking beyond the simple answer of Knight as an off-ball linebacker next to Ernest Jones IV. The idea now is whether Seattle can find another role for him, the way it did with Bryant when it moved him from slot corner to safety.
Edge rusher would be the obvious place to ask the question, even if Knight has not played that position in the NFL yet. Macdonald clearly values players who can line up in multiple spots, and those kinds of defenders are hard to ignore when they can actually handle the job.
Knight doesn’t fit everywhere. He’s too small for the defensive line, doesn’t have the coverage skills to be a defensive back, and he’s too big to slide into that world. But if he can give Seattle useful snaps as an edge presence, that could be the route that gets him on the field.
And there is at least one number that helps the idea make sense: Knight had 3.5 sacks in the regular season in 2025. If the Seahawks can tap into that kind of pressure again, they may have uncovered another defender who was hiding in plain sight, the way they once did with Coby Bryant.
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