The 10 greatest Seahawks: No. 1

1. OT Walter Jones

1997-present

Walter Jones' position has no stats, his place in Seahawks history has no peers.

He's so good we notice only when he's bad. Like that November afternoon in 2005 when he gave up a sack to the New York Giants' Osi Umenyiora and reporters lined up three deep to hear Jones explain the first sack he allowed in two years.

Or last season when injuries to his shoulder and ankle eroded his usual dominance and he still went to the Pro Bowl for the seventh time in his career.

Jones' job is to render the man he's blocking irrelevant, and he's so effective at that he too often escapes notice. Numbers don't help, either. His career statistics don't go beyond games played and games started.

Quarterbacks make the most money in the NFL, wide receivers grab passes and snag attention, but Jones has stood as a fixture at the left edge of the Seahawks' offensive line for a decade now. A mountain of a man so often left on an island, protecting the blind side of seven different Seattle quarterbacks. Seattle has made the playoffs four consecutive seasons, and Jones missed only one game in that time — a meaningless regular-season finale in Green Bay in 2005.

Shaun Alexander has the MVP award from 2005, Matt Hasselbeck has the car sponsorship, but it's Jones who was truly Seattle's Cadillac during a Super Bowl season when many considered him to be the very best player in the NFL.

One story illustrates his importance as well as any. Hall of Fame quarterback Troy Aikman was in town to broadcast the Cowboys game in Seattle in October 2005, and he asked coach Mike Holmgren just how the Seahawks were going to account for Dallas outside linebacker DeMarcus Ware.

Holmgren chuckled for a second before asking if Aikman watched the man who would be blocking Ware. That would be Jones. The Seahawks would be OK, Holmgren assured Aikman.

Actually, they were a lot better than that. Ware finished with five tackles that game, but Jones kept Ware so far from Hasselbeck that long-distance charges could have applied. Jones did his job so well that Sunday no one noticed, which has been the case for so much of his 10 years in Seattle.