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 chute in a Tampa-2 look. He was a bit uncertain of his footing on Lumen Field’s wet turf, but it all turned out okay.
In the bigger picture, Jones can do it all — blow up run fits from the second level, rush from the edge, and he’s dynamite when utilized as a stand-up three-tech rusher in Seattle’s overload blitz packages. At his best, Jones has a Fred Warner-ish aspect to his game. We’re not saying that Jones is at Warner’s level right now, because no linebacker is, but the combination of effectiveness and versatility does bring some thoughts to mind.
I was at the Seahawks-Texans game, and I asked Jones how important it is to be that do-it-all guy.
“I think that’s been the biggest thing for me,” Jones responded. “I think my first three years in the league, four years in the league, people always wanted to classify me as just a run-stopper, but I’m a ballplayer, bro. You put that ball anywhere, I’m going to get it. Coverage, run the ball, it’s just what I do, I play football.”
Well, no argument there. Other key cogs in Seattle’s defense have noticed how crucial Jones is to the entire operation.
“He’s really important,” defensive lineman Leonard Williams told me when I asked him what Jones means to this team. “He’s pretty much the quarterback of the defense. He keeps everyone calm. He hypes everyone up. He also knows that he has to communicate, especially here in Lumen when it’s really loud. He does a good job of getting everything out.”
Deciding after the 2021 season that Bobby Wagner was past his prime was one of the worst moves in franchise history, and it’s a part of what led to the death of the Legion of Boom and Pete Carroll’s eventual… “reassignment.“ (We don’t call it a firing up here in the Emerald City). The Seahawks have tried in vain to find that kind of player and football mind at the position ever since. Who knew that he would appear out of the blue after two other teams decided he was expendable?
This time, Seattle got the better of the deal, and they’ll have a constantly improving Ernest Jones for a while.
