Boom-or-Bust Killer Prospects
3 more of the safest first round targets for the Seahawks
If the Seahawks draft an edge rusher in the first round, which is a position I’ve had solidly ranked as one of the three most-likely to be targeted by Seattle, nearly every prospect on that list comes with a high ceiling and a low floor. This even includes probable top-3 pick Andre Carter, the Penn State rusher who gets compared to Micah Parsons but “is a work in progress from a tool box standpoint…there’s more risk than some are making it out to be” according to some coaches.
An edge prospect who is mocked as high as fourth to the Patriots and as low as being available to the Seahawks at 18 is Georgia’s Jalon Walker, perhaps the utlimate example of boom-or-bust potential in this class.
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As easy as it is to get excited for a player’s best case scenario, this film breakdown by Real Bucs Talk (they’re regularly putting out 10-minute breakdowns of first round prospects, so give them a follow if you’re interested in that) reminded me of Walker’s potential to be the worst first round pick of 2025. (And his upside to be the best.)
We rarely talk about that before the draft do we? Every first round has to have a “worst pick” and it’s not usually the player that fans or experts expect it to be.
I randomly chose 2020 for examples and coincidentally the top-3 picks that year were a QB, a DE, and a CB:
Joe Burrow (good pick)
Chase Young (bad pick)
Jeff Okudah (worst pick)
We get it: Young and Okudah were the picks that almost any team would have made in those positions, just as Carter and Travis Hunter are the prospects that almost any team would take at 2-3 in 2025. It doesn’t mean that Carter and Hunter will have good or even serviceable careers. Teams couldn’t even risk putting the 25-year-old Okudah on the field last season.
Fans of Jalon Walker have mostly highlighted what he could become because there’s not much on the record yet that would otherwise make him a top-10 pick. Real Bucs Talk highlights Walker’s unique strengths as an edge rusher, but a Mike Macdonald linebacker also has to be good in coverage (Walker wasn’t asked to do much of that at Georgia and what he did do wasn’t great), he has to tackle (some concerns there), and he’s undersized in addition to having “short arms”.
If everything goes right, the Seahawks could be drafting the next Clay Matthews.
Walker is also a talented and productive pass rusher, and shows off his bend, strength and quickness when getting after the QB. He plays with his hair on fire and can hang as an off-ball linebacker who can stay on the field for all three downs and be a positive player against the run and pass, with the pass-rush ability being a giant cherry on top.
He won’t be an ideal fit for every team, but Walker is just a guy I would want in my front seven. His competitive style is infectious and he has the ability to fill up the box score in different ways, with leadership to boot. He reminds me a lot of Clay Matthews.
But if even a couple things go awry, Walker could be the next Zaven Collins (a totally forgettable first round pick by the Cardinals in 2021) or worse yet the next Clelin Ferrell.
We could maybe say the same for other first round edge prospects like teammate Mykel Williams, Texas A&M’s Shemar Stewart (one of the least productive first round edge prospects in history), or Tennessee’s James Pearce. Marshall’s Mike Green has been called the edge prospect who might have the best set of moves in the draft:
But comes with his own set of concerns, including multiple off-field accusations that worry a lot of people, and level of competition at Marshall.
This is how I keep coming back to Boston College’s Donovan Ezeiruaku apparently, because while his athleticism won’t “wow” like Walker’s and he could DEFINITELY be a reach at 18, Seattle would be getting the country’s best pass rusher in 2024 and none of the character concerns of Green.
Ezeiruaku could also be a bust and if he’s drafted in the first round he could be the worst pick of the entire day. Like a K’Laivon Chaisson type of miss.
There will not be any “right answers” when it comes to who the Seahawks should draft in two weeks, only who you have a preference for (and many of us don’t even have one of those) and while Walker could become the NFL’s next great linebacker (think of how many of those have slipped in the draft, like T.J. Watt) there’s also the chance that he’s bouncing around the league in three years.
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Whereas Ezeiruaku seems a lot easier to project to the next level but might not be worth a top-20 pick.