The Seattle Seahawks have announced their 2026 Midseason Honors. The honors at stake include: Offensive MVP, Defensive MVP, Special Teams MVP, Top Newcomer, Best Relief Performance, Best Play on Offense, Best Play on Defense, Best Play on Special Teams, Trent to Continue, and Thing to Clean Up. Let’s see who and what items won each honor.
Offensive MVP: Jaxon Smith-Njigba
To nobody’s surprise, the offensive MVP midway through the season is JSN. He is a front runner for his second NFL Offensive Player of the Year Award, and frankly
could be a finalist for the MVP this season as well. Through nine games, JSN has 71 catches for 1,036 yards and nine touchdowns. If he were to keep up this pace for 17 games, that would put him at 134 catches for 1,957 yards and 17 touchdowns. Not only would these numbers break each Seahawk single-season receiving record, they also would put JSN as:
- the second most receiving yards in an NFL single season (Calvin Johnson is first with 1,964 yards);
- the seventh most receptions in an NFL season (Michael Thomas is first with 149 receptions); and
- tie for the sixth most receiving touchdowns in an NFL season (Randy Moss is first with 23 receiving touchdowns)
All of these numbers make it safe to say that JSN is your offensive, and frankly team MVP midway through the 2026 season.
Defense MVP: Ernest Jones IV
On defense, choosing an MVP may be a little more difficult. There are multiple candidates who could take this honor. Byron Murphy II, Leonard Williams, Demarcus Lawrence, Devon Witherspoon, Nick Emmawori, Julian Love, the list continues. The defensive performance for Seattle is really a testament to how close knit this team is and how dialed in Mike Macdonald has them. All of that being said, the Seahawks gave this honor to the green dot himself, Ernest Jones IV.
Jones IV is the leader of this defense, and a critical backbone to the number one defense for yards/game in the NFL. Jones IV leads the team in tackles (88), which is good for fourth most tackles in the NFL. Jones IV also has three sacks (tied for second most on the team), five passes defensed (second most on the team), and has one interception.
Special Teams MVP: Michael Dickson
For anyone watching Seahawks games, a huge piece of the team’s success comes from their All-Pro punter who makes pinning the opposing team’s offense inside their own ten-yard line look easy. Dickson has a 42.8 net average this season, and has 15 punts inside the 20 with only two touchbacks. Thanks to Dickson’s toolbelt of different kicks, Seattle has been able to get two turnovers off of muffed punts, and only allowed eight returns for 39 yards all season long.
Top newcomer: Emanuel Wilson
Entering the 2026 season the Seahawks only had a few newcomers outside of the draft. The biggest names included Emanuel Wilson, Dante Fowler Jr., Rodney Thomas II, and Trevon Diggs. Considering the last two are currently on the practice squad, and Fowler Jr. only got his first sack this last week against the Arizona Cardinals, it makes this honor a little easier to give.
That shouldn’t be taken as a knock on Wilson, however. The Seahawks running game has struggled mightily throughout the 2026 season, thanks to injuries. However, the one player who helped keep the boat afloat was Wilson. Despite his noticeable lack of speed and agility, Wilson was still able to deliver big blows to defenders with his physical running style. This bruising ability really helped Seattle run the ball late in games. Take for example, Wilson was able to seal the victory over the Arizona Cardinals in week two with 92 rushing yards. Wilson was also able to show this ability in his 100-yard game against the Kansas City Chiefs in week 7. Wilson currently leads the team in rushing yards (403) and rushing touchdowns (3).
Best relief performance: Drew Lock
The Seahawks have enjoyed multiple great relief performances, such as Rodney Thomas II filling in for the injury-marred safety room early in the season, and recently with Josh Jones filling in for left tackle Charles Cross. However, the most important position in football still is the quarterback.
Lock is currently undefeated on the season, beating the New England Patriots in Week 1, and beating the Arizona Cardinals in Weeks 2 and 8. In these three games, Lock has completed 71.1 percent of his passes, for 597 yards, five touchdowns and zero turnovers. Lock has a 116.0 passer rating. This passer rating would lead the NFL if he had enough attempts to qualify.
The way Lock is performing has created a quarterback controversy in some fan’s eyes. Although it will be shocking to see the Seahawks start Lock over a healthy Sam Darnold, it will be interesting to see how each quarterback plays the rest of the season. Lock’s contract expires after 2026, could he perform well enough to make John Schneider consider keeping him over Darnold into 2027?
Best Play on offense: Drew Lock to Jaxon Smith-Njigba vs. Arizona
The Seahawks best play on offense goes to their longest scrimmage play of the season, an 82-yard touchdown from Lock to JSN. This huge touchdown happened on the second play from scrimmage in the week two victory over the Arizona Cardinals and essentially ended the game for Arizona just as it began. This early lead allowed Emanuel Wilson and the run game to take over and keep the Cardinals out of arms reach for the rest of the game.
Best Play on defense: Nick Emmanwori pressures Patrick Mahomes into Ty Okada interception
The game against the Kansas City Chiefs felt a lot closer than the final score would lead you to believe. At one point in the game when the Chiefs were driving (potentially to tie or go up on the Seahawks’ 3-0 lead), Nick Emmanwori, lined up as a linebacker, used his elite closing speed to hit quarterback Patrick Mahomes and force him into an errant pass that was intercepted by safety Ty Okada.
Although this play itself was very impressive, this honor felt like a way for the Seahawks to give an honor to Nick Emmanwori as well. And who can blame them? Emmanwori has been an elite chess piece for Mike Macdonald. His performance against the Chiefs may have been the most impressive performance of the star safety’s young career.
Best Play on Special Teams: Michael Dickson and Nehemiah Pritchett team up to create a turnover vs. 49ers
With the Seahawks having no return touchdowns this season, it makes sense to give this honor to a forced turnover made by the Special teams. As mentioned above, Michael Dickson has forced two turnovers with his various styles of kicks. In the week 5 loss to the 49ers, Dickson created one of these turnovers against 49ers returner Jacob Cowing. Cowing muffed the catch and when attempting to recover his muff was thumped by Nehemiah Pritchett, allowing Eric Saubert to recover the ball.
Although this is an impressive play by Dickson, Pritchett, and Saubert, it will be disappointing if the team cannot improve on this play later this season. With Rashid Shaheed returning from injury soon, it will be interesting to see if he can house a return to the house. Or perhaps Tory Horton, or Jadarian Price can assist in housing a return as well.
Trend to Continue: Overall strong play on defense
This Seahawks team would arguably be nowhere without their defensive performance all season long (no disrespect to MVP candidate, JSN). Seahawks.com does a great job at lining up all of the defensive stats below:
“Through nine games, the Seahawks rank first in total defense (244.2 yards per game) and passing defense (155.1), second in opponent yards per carry average (3.4), fourth in rushing yards allowed (89.1), tied for fifth in takeaways (13) and fourth in scoring defense (18.0) despite that number being inflated by opponents scoring two defensive touchdowns against Seattle and setting up several other scores with short fields on takeaways.”
The other impressive thing to note with the Seahawks’ defensive performances is the fact that they are doing this with injuries hitting them all season long. Early in the season, the Seahawks were without starting safeties Julian Love and Ty Okada. And more recently the team has been without defensive linemen Uchenna Nwosu and Leonard Williams. These injuries have not appeared to impact the team’s defensive performance, as the next wave of the 70 man roster have been able to keep Mike Macdonald’s unit as elite as can be.
Thing to clean up: Turnovers
Although the run game as a whole could be considered for this honor, the honor has to go to overall turnovers. In the Seahawks’s four losses, they have committed 11 turnovers. Many of these are unfortunately due to Sam Darnold, who is tied for fourth most interceptions in the NFLdespite missing two (three if you count week 1) games. Darnold is not alone in the turnover issues however. The Seahawks running backs have also fumbled the ball five times (Emanuel Wilson twice, Jadarian Price twice, and George Holani once).Rashid Shaheed also coughed the ball up once as well.
If the Seahawks want to get into the playoffs and defend their Super Bowl title, cleaning up the turnovers is a must.
