Sports Illustrated has put Byron Murphy II into the 2026 Defensive Player of the Year conversation, a notable lift for a Seattle Seahawks defense that has been praised for depth more than for a single headliner. The piece named Murphy as one of three Seahawks who could draw votes for the award, a sign that his work inside may be hard to ignore if his production keeps climbing.
That search is being driven by a simple question: can a player like Murphy make the leap from important piece to award candidate on a team that wins with a collective defense? Last season, the Seahawks did not have a realistic Defensive Player of the Year candidate, while Myles Garrett was the obvious pick elsewhere. This time, Murphy is being framed as someone worth watching because he nearly matched Leonard Williams as a pass rusher, even while functioning effectively as the nose tackle and serving as the tip of the spear for the league’s best run defense.
The history behind the award helps explain why Murphy is even in the discussion. Defensive tackles have won before, and Aaron Donald and J.J. Watt helped make that path feel less far-fetched. Warren Sapp won in 1999, Dana Stubblefield in 1997, and the last off-ball linebacker to take the prize was Luke Kuechly in 2013, with Brian Urlacher winning in 2005 and Ray Lewis and Derrick Brooks representing a golden age for the position in the early 2000s. The pattern is clear enough: voters reward rare impact, and interior disruption can count just as much as splashy edge production when it is obvious enough.
The catch is the one that defines Murphy’s case. Recent winners have usually reached the award’s upper statistical tier, and eight Defensive Player of the Year winners in the last 30 years recorded at least 11 sacks. Murphy is a year closer to his prime, but 11 sacks is still a steep number for a player whose value comes from doing two jobs at once — collapsing pockets and controlling the run. That is why his candidacy feels real but unfinished: the Seahawks may not need one star to power their defense, but Murphy probably needs one star-level season to turn this into more than a speculative vote-getter.
2026 will answer it. If Murphy adds the sack total that usually gets a defender into the room, the Seahawks could have an individual award contender on a defense built to win as a unit. If he does not, Seattle’s best argument will stay the same as last year’s: that its value is spread across the whole front, not concentrated in one name.
