2023 NFL Draft: The 40 players in EVERY first round mock
Get to know the names that will--and eventually won't--get drafted by the Seahawks and in the first round: Seaside Joe 1491
In case you forgot, ESPN’s Mel Kiper had the Seattle Seahawks picking Will Levis at #5 and Byron Young at #20 in his first NFL Mock Draft this year. Kiper’s latest mock draft continues to put Levis in the top-5 (though the number of people who agree with that opinion is getting smaller by the day), but Young, who mostly suffers from not being named Bryce, is a 25-year-old defensive end prospect out of Tennessee.
You are forgiven for not knowing anything about Byron Young, as he’s now ranked 96th on the NFLMockDraftDatabase consensus big board. Nobody got on that ship with Kiper.
Whatever compelled Kiper to think that was a possibility in January—who knows…and sadly we’ve seen Seattle do stranger things—but for the most part few things do actually ever change with mock drafts, whether that’s month-to-month or person-to-person. This mock draft by Todd McShay posted in early December of 2022 has 31 names and I’d say that only about five of those names aren’t still regularly posted in the first round, with all of those prospects coming at the back end of day one.
However, we also know that the first round always comes with surprises and 2022’s strange pick—the Patriots selecting center Cole Strange 29th overall—serves as a reminder of that unpredictability.
So why is everybody’s opinion on the first round of the draft so…predictable? I find it funny when people post some mock draft result online and say, “Ugh, I hate this mock, this person is just trying to be different for clicks!” Okay, so you prefer re-reading the same article over and over again just on different websites by different people? By all means when it comes to mock drafts, clickbait the shit out of me. I was browsing mock after mock on NFLMDD and found so little variance from one person to the next, it’s hard to understand the point of reading more than one.
The Seahawks do hold pick #20 and there’s at least a decent chance that John Schneider will listen to offers to trade down, so the chances of Seattle making the next strange ‘Strange’ aren’t impossibly low.
Recent episodes of Seaside Joe that address the NFL Draft — the best and worst case scenarios, Anthony Richardson pro day confirms all your biases, Hendon Hooker part I and Hendon Hooker part II, if the Seahawks want to trade up for QB then we can still stay together, and prepping everyone for a draft day showdown between myself and SeahawksDraftBlog — have all had incredible amounts of engagement with many dozens and sometimes 100s of comments. So that’s why in April I’m definitely going to lean into draft coverage more than I have in the last two months, where the current Seahawks and free agency was more in need of our attention: Give the people what they want!
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I think the best work and writing done on the 2023 rookie class still comes after the draft when we know who the next round of Seattle Seahawks players will actually be—I will not be roped into arguments over future members of the Eagles or Patriots! I just present some facts and let the people decide for themselves who they want or don’t want—so as with the case with “The Summer of Ken Walker III” a year ago, stay tuned into Seaside Joe for an overload of season prep work that you won’t get ANYWHERE else.
If one of those rookies is a quarterback, especially in the first round, I won’t be upset.
But we know that regardless of position, mock drafts can only take us so far and today I just want to start your weekend off with some soft preparation on the names you will hear a lot between now and the end of the first round. After all, I keep seeing the same names (at the same spots) in most mock drafts and not much has changed since the end of the college or NFL season. Except for Byron Young.
It occurred to me that I’ll bring up “this guy” or “that guy” and that many of you (and in some cases for sure, me too!) don’t know any of these guys. I haven’t done ANY prep work for you to prepare for the whole lot of names and not just Will Levis, Anthony Richardson, Will Anderson, Jalen Carter, and Tyree Wilson.
So I want to list the 40 names that I keep seeing in EVERY mock draft—yes, I know there are only 31 first round picks this year, but I’m leaning into something conceptual here. I will list them by position with their 4/1/2023 consensus big board ranking in parantheses:
QB - Bryce Young (3), C.J. Stroud (2), Anthony Richardson (7), Will Levis (12)
RB - Bijan Robinson (10)
WR - Jaxon Smith-Njigba (15), Quentin Johnston (17), Jordan Addison (21), Zay Flowers (27)
TE - Michael Mayer (22), Dalton Kincaid (25), Darnell Washington (33)
OT - Paris Johnson (9), Peter Skoronski (14), Broderick Jones (18), Anton Harrison (30), Darnell Wright (28), Dawand Jones (35)
iOL - O’Cyrus Torrence (29), John Michael Schmitz (50), Joe Tippmann (62)
DT - Jalen Carter (5), Bryan Bresee (23), Calijah Kancey (24), Mazi Smith (40)
EDGE - Will Anderson (1), Tyree Wilson (6), Myles Murphy (13), Nolan Smith (19), Lukas Van Ness (16), Will McDonald IV (39), Adetomiwa Adebawore (46)
LB - Trenton Simpson (42)
CB - Christian Gonzalez (4), Devon Witherspoon (8), Joey Porter, Jr. (11), Deonte Banks (26), Cam Smith (31), , Emmanuel Forbes (38)
S - Brian Branch (20)
If you have been paying attention to the draft then there’s probably going to be a few names where you may think “I disagree with him being listed here” and “I disagree with the name you left off” and that’s perfectly okay because there’s no way to make a “correct” list like this one. It’s not a big board, it’s just based on my recent observations and I respect that people have different observations.
Is it possible that the Seahawks will draft three of these 40 names? They do have picks #5, #20, and #37 so yes, it is possible. At least one of the names and probably two of them. Do three names stand out to you?
Honorable Mentions: S Antonio Johnson (45), CB Kelee Ringo (32), WR Jalin Hyatt (36), QB Hendon Hooker (54), RB Jahmyr Gibbs, C Luke Wypler (71), G Steve Avila (51), EDGE B.J. Ojulari (41), EDGE Keon White (49), S Clark Phillips III
I want to emphasize again that this list is not “Oh, I want the Seahawks to draft this guy, I have this guy rated high, I have this guy rated low…” It’s only names I see popping up most often in first round mock drafts. I haven’t seen many linebackers making their way into the first round and Trent Simpson could easily be on the honorable mentions category if not listed at all!
Tell me what you think of these names—if you see names that you want a deeper dive on before the draft, please drop a comment! If you want to give your own draft profile on a player, drop a comment! Seaside Joe gets 100x the engagement as most other Substack newsletters because that’s just the nature of Seahawks fans: We’re built different.
That’s why Seaside Joe’s rate of paid subscribers is four to five times GREATER than the Substack average. I see newsletters that claim to have 20,000 subscribers but they only have 1,000 paid subscribers and they get three or four comments per article. Hmm, strange. Cole strange, even. We are nearing 2,000 total subs and 500 paid subs and are regularly getting 30-100 comments. Don’t be afraid to join the community if you haven’t already—we aren’t like them.
Share us with Seahawks fans, join the Regular Joes club, and come back tomorrow. I guarantee I’ll be here. But will Byron Young???
I don't mind you giving us more Pre-Draft Draft focused content, just make sure it keeps that trademark Seaside Joe levity, self awareness, unexpected references to movies & music and puts forward thought out alternative views!
And to you, community - Keep up the engagement on non-Draft posts! The quality of the writing is exactly the same, as are the quality of the comments. So lets make sure that quantity of interest is matching the quality :)
In my little corner of the universe the Seahawks' top 4 picks in rounds 1 and 2 include 2 DLs, 1 WR, and 1 RB.
Any two of (Carter, Ade Ade, Mazi) plus any one of (Flowers, Mingo) plus any one of (Robinson, Gibbs) would be pretty much perfect. The Seahawks have the draft capital to move up and around in the first two rounds to get any of the guys they really want--it is going to be spectacular!