Seahawks rookie Nick Emmanwori had a less-than-ideal start to his first NFL season. On Seattle's first defensive drive of its season-opener, Emmanwori made a tackle and on that same play suffered an ankle injury, the result of another player falling on it, and that injury would see Emmanwori miss Weeks 2-4. He wouldn't make his return until Week 5 at home against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and in that game, he recorded five tackles.

Since then, in essentially four full games (he played just 63.9 percent of the snaps against Tampa Bay), Emmanwori has 31 tackles, 0.5 sacks, six passes defensed, three tackles for loss and one quarterback hit.

"The game's slowing down well for me," Emmanwori said following Seattle's most recent game. "It was my fourth, real full game today. As the week progresses, and as I'm seeing more ball, seeing more frequent stuff and seeing a lot of similarities between each week. I got some good vets and good coaching so the game's slowing down real well for me."

Last week, Emmanwori recorded his first sack, and it is indicative of the progress the rookie, who according to teammate Devon Witherspoon is not allowed to be a rookie anymore, has been making since his return from injury.

"Now he's getting comfortable being on the field," Witherspoon said. "Trusting what he sees on tape now. The way we communicate everything, he trusts what the guys around him tell him and then he goes out there and makes plays. So, to see him grow up as a rookie but now he's getting more of, 'Your rookie days are over bro,' We're halfway through the season like, 'Hey man, you're an NFL football player now.' So, that's what it is."

Along with recording his first sack, Emmanwori also had a team high nine tackles and four passes defensed, stats good enough to win rookie of the week.

On his first sack, Emmanwori said, "My first sack, it felt good. I was hoping I was getting my first sack last week against the Commanders, but I was real close. It was my whole point this week to get a sack, and I've been working with AD (Aden Durde) and (Justin) Hinds and CP (Chris Partridge) about blitz techniques and how to get the dude down."

When the Seahawks drafted Emmanwori, they knew he was a player that had the potential to play multiple positions and be used in many different ways on the field.

"Every week you see him growing, you see him like wanting more," defensive coordinator Aden Durde said. "He's an exciting player to coach. He understands the level of work you have to put in to do the unique things that he does. He can do things in the game at every level of the defense, and you think that's really cool and that's exciting, but that takes a lot of work. That takes a lot of work to understand how to play with technique on the first level, understand how to have all your keys and your run keys and your pass keys on the second level, all the adjustments, and then on the third level, your technique and understanding your adjustments there. He's putting in the work and it's showing on Sundays. He's just got to keep going forward. Keep his eyes focused on what he's got to do and go."

Head coach Mike Macdonald said, "We're trying to develop him more as an in box run defender, where I think he can make some decisions a little bit quicker. When he's playing his best ball, he's really heavy handed, a tough guy to move, and he can also play great in space, so he gives you that flexibility. He's on the field a lot since he's been healthy and it's been an asset for us, and those are decisions we have to make every week on how we want to deploy him."

When a player like Emmanwori is good at many different things, it's easy to want to try to play him everywhere, but Macdonald says that's what he wants to avoid and what the coaches are working through.

"Even though he's healthy you can't just say, 'Alright you're going to do all these things.'," Macdonald said. "It's, 'Okay, let's pick a handful of things that we feel like you're confident in doing and as you've shown that you can execute those things and handle it, there's natural progressions on things that you can do.' Where it might look like he's doing something different, but it's maybe just a little bit of a change, a little deviation from what he's been doing. We think that's the way to maintaining that type of execution."

Macdonald added, "We have several guys like that where you sit down and game plan things and you're thinking, 'Okay, how can we use so and so's abilities this game because we're trying to do X or we're trying to do Y.' Then you say, 'Okay, well, can he do it? Okay, yes, what is it, is it worth it? Is the juice worth the squeeze? You're only going to get so many reps. How many times are we actually going to call this? What kind of return are we getting on our investment?' But those are all part of the conversations. He's definitely one of those guys that we're talking about all the time."

So far, Emmanwori has lived up to the expectations that people in the building at the Virginia Mason Athletic Center have had since he was drafted in April.

"He's just doing everything we thought he would do," Witherspoon said. "We ask him to do a lot and he does it. So, it's like everything you need in a rookie. He's strong, he's big. He's bigger than the majority of everybody out there, so it's crazy when you see it. That man, he can play football. I'm ready to see what he got."