Seattle Seahawks: Grading every 2019 NFL Draft pick

Round 2, Pick 47: Marquise Blair, S, Utah

Marquise Blair was a surprising pick and I’m not entirely on board with the selection. While Seattle’s defensive backfield needs more depth, Blair is known as a hard-hitting safety who likes to get downhill and flatten opponents. You can go find highlight reels of his destroying guys posted on youtube or twitter. While that’s very impressive, Blair’s biggest concerns are pass coverage and size.

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Starting with size, Blair’s play has drawn some early comparisons to Kam Chancellor‘s. Let me just shut that down right now. While Blair did play a lot of snaps in the box at Utah, he’s only 6-1, 195 pounds. Chancellor is listed at 6-3, 225 pounds, which puts him in a significantly different class than Blair. Yes, he may be able to land some devastating blows, but there’s some concern that he may injure himself with those same hits at the pro level.

While Blair did play free safety in college, like Earl Thomas, he doesn’t have the coverage abilities that Thomas brought to the table. Personally, I thought the Seahawks would be better off drafting a high-level coverage safety before a heavy hitter. After all, wasn’t Thomas the more valuable safety in the Legion of Boom secondary? He was the team’s X-factor and there are people who would argue he was the most important piece on that defense during the two Super Bowl runs.

PFF did throw out Blair’s coverage grade on Twitter and it looks like it stacks up great against other safeties, but there were still 23 safeties with better coverage grades and some of those were in this year’s draft.

I’m not saying Blair is a bad player and that he won’t fit in Seattle, but the team had other options at safety, including Delaware’s Nasir Adderley, Washington’s Taylor Rapp and Virginia’s Juan Thornhill. Hopefully Blair will make a fool out of me in the next two years, but for now, I’m giving this selection a “meh” grade.

Pick Grade: C+