The Seattle Seahawks defense has been absolutely dominant in their last two games. The addition of Quandre Diggs in the secondary has been a big reason why, but he’s not the only newcomer to make an impact these past few weeks.

Shaquem Griffin, who had been limited to special teams duties for basically the first one and a half years of his career, has emerged as an edge rushing option for this Seattle defense – and already he’s proven he deserves to keep that role going forward.

Griffin played 14 defensive snaps in Week 10 against San Francisco, and saw 25 snaps on Sunday against the Eagles. He had a huge impact on Sunday, recording one combined tackle, two quarterback hits and helping force a fumble.

Griffin has begun to push veteran Ziggy Ansah for playing time on the edge, which may have contributed to Ansah’s strong performance on Sunday as well.

“Competition is a beautiful thing,” coach Pete Carroll commented on Monday. “They’ve got a little competition there. Griff’s making a move on them. He looks like he’s got some stuff that we can incorporate and keep developing that he can be a factor as well.”

Griffin was an elite pass rusher in college at Central Florida, but concerns about his lack of size prevented Carroll and company from unleashing him in that role with Seattle.

“It was kind of hard to imagine that it would work,” Carroll continued. “We used him as a blitzer. We needed him outside to blitz more and to do that. He did show some stuff and that’s where we saw the spark. We’ve been messing with him for a few weeks now. It just seems like it’s coming around a little closer now. The action is just happening now. I’m excited about it.”

Expect to see Griffin’s role continue to grow as a situational pass rusher, especially if he continues to make impact plays for this team in the final few weeks of the season.