The Height of the World

How a position switch helped Byron Murphy II best Von Miller: Seaside Joe 1928

When asked by Albert Breer which 2024 player acquisition best represented the Seahawks’ “progress” this offseason, head coach Mike Macdonald was quick to answer that it was Byron Murphy II, a sentiment echoed by general manager John Schneider. Still, the first thing—the first thing—that Macdonald says he noticed about Murphy is that he’s undersized compared to most defensive tackles:

“[Murphy] doesn’t meet all the size criteria. That’s the first thing. And so you see the ability on tape, and listening to how our personnel people described this guy as a person, this is our type of dude. I didn’t go into the school, I don’t know anybody at Texas, it’s not like I’m calling those people. It’s going straight off our scouts and our in-house guys. And how they describe him, that’s our type of guy right there. Take the position and all that s--- out of it, this is our first pick as the new crew here. We think this guy is gonna be very representative of who we want to be.”

It is not all that uncommon for a team to single out their first round pick as the offseason acquisition that is “most representative” of who they want to be or as simply the “most important”. I’m sure that most teams that picked ahead of Seattle would shout out first round picks like Caleb Williams, Marvin Harrison, or Brock Bowers as being the player that they want to build an identity around or who best fits into their current identity. Is there any better answer to Breer’s question, if posed league-wide, than the Chargers choosing a right tackle, Joe Alt, fifth overall instead of receiving threats such as Malik Nabers and Brock Bowers?

Drafting Alt instead of Nabers is L.A.’s way of solidifying what we already knew, which is that the Chargers belong to Jim Harbaugh now.

So Macdonald and Schneider putting on a spotlight on their first round pick is in itself not surprising, but that doesn’t make their answer any less fair: Byron Murphy II seems to equally represent the old regime and the new, and not once since the Seahawks made him the second defensive player off the board in April has their confidence in Murphy waned. It sure feels like the Seahawks at least believe that they added a player at 16th overall who could have been picked ten spots earlier without any draft experts blinking an eye.

It’s amazing that this almost didn’t happen because Murphy initially wanted to be the next Marshawn Lynch.

From ‘lean’backer to ‘mean sacker’

In a post for the Dallas News just before the draft—so some of you may have already seen it but many probably haven’t—Murphy says that he has it on good authority that he won’t fall past 16 (accurate) and that he grew up a fan of the Legion of Boom. That’s likely also why he modeled his early high school career after Lynch and Adrian Peterson, saying “that’s where my heart is” in terms of playing running back.

But it wasn’t where his talent is, unfortunately.

(Fortunately, actually…Byron, do you have any idea how lucky you are to be a defensive tackle instead of a running back? If you were the best running back in the class, you still wouldn’t have gotten anywhere near the first round and we certainly wouldn’t be talking about how to allocate enough money to keep you in Seattle four or five years from now.)

Murphy’s mom Seneca noted that Murphy was a dominant running back and linebacker in Pee Wee despite being 2-3 years younger than the competition because he was too big to play with kids his own age. Ironically, he’s now being called “too small”, but that’s only because of a position switch in the middle of his high school career. His first coaching staff at DeSoto High School played him exclusively at linebacker—no running back—and Seneca says he only played about five minutes per game as a sophomore.

It was only after DeSoto hired Claude Mathis as the head coach in 2019 that Murphy was moved to defensive tackle and at that point Von Miller’s school record was history.

Supreme field justice turns Murphy into DeSoto mayor

The first thing you need to know about DeSoto High School in Texas is that it has produced such NFL players as Von Miller, Jalen Mills, Ellis Hobbs, and Tatum Bell, as well as Seattle’s most recent first round defensive tackle prior to Murphy, that being Marcus Tubbs. Current Seahawks receiver and potential kick returner Laviska Shenault also went to DeSoto, as did Zach Orr, one of Mike Macdonald’s colleagues in Baltimore and the person who replaced him as the Ravens defensive coordinator.

The second thing you should know is that the school could produce a lot more NFL talents like Murphy if the aforementioned Mathis is retained as head coach.

A running back at Texas State in the ‘90s who has been nominated for the College Football Hall of Fame and arguably the best player in the history of the school, Mathis is currently in his second stint as the DeSoto head coach. The team had won its first ever 6A state title in 2016, but parted ways with coach Todd Peterman in 2018 and underwhelmed with a 9-3 record in the lone season of head coach Michael Robinson. (Not that Michael Robinson.)

That also means that Mathis became Murphy’s third head coach in three years of high school.

Mathis helped DeSoto get gradually better each year and they’ve now won the last two 6A Texas state championships, including a 16-0 record in 2023. That success has permeated the upper ranks of football, not only with Murphy’s selection as a first round pick but also in the College Football Playoffs: Michigan defensive back German Green and Washington defensive back Jabbar Muhammad both went to DeSoto and played for Mathis.

It is fair then for us to believe that Mathis played the most important part in fitting Murphy’s unique athletic talents into the perfect role on defense: An unstoppable force at defensive tackle.

Von bended knee

“That had a huge impact,” Murphy said to Dallas News. “I wasn’t thinking about playing defensive tackle until my coach asked me if I wanted to. If it weren’t for him, I probably wouldn’t be here right now.”

After moving to defensive tackle in Mathis’s new scheme, Murphy’s entire outlook on life must have changed. He wasn’t dominating like he did at lower levels—he was barely even playing—and overnight he became one of the best high school defensive players in the state of Texas, a place we sort of associate with good high school football.

As a junior defensive tackle, Murphy posted 98 tackles, eight sacks, 12 tackles for a loss, four forced fumbles, and scored a touchdown on a 25-yard fumble recovery. That was his first time as first-team All-State by the AP. As a senior, Murphy tallied 79 tackles, 14 sacks, and 22 tackles for a loss; in a playoff game against Shoemaker High School, Murphy had four sacks.

His 14 sacks broke Von Miller’s single season school record. You can watch some of the highlight reels Murphy posted on Hudl while he was in high school if you’re so inclined.

Two seasons with Mathis put Murphy into the top-50 recruits for the state of Texas and he wasn’t even the highest-ranked defensive lineman on his own team: Defensive end Shemar Turner became a top-10 recruit in the state of Texas and committed to Texas A&M as a four-star player. Turner had his own sort of breakout season in 2023 and could end up being an early draft pick in 2025.

But for Murphy, he was now in the club. He originally committed to play for Baylor and then switched to Texas as a three-star recruit in the 2021 class.

Although he was an afterthought in a 2021 Longhorns class that included five-star tight end Ja’Tavion Sanders and four-star recruits such as receiver Xavier Worthy and running back Jonathon Brooks, Murphy surpassed all of his teammates in terms of NFL value during his three years at Texas. But we’ll save that story for future episodes of Seaside Joe:

The New/Same Era of Seahawks Defense

“That was basically our biggest move in free agency,” Schneider continues. “So you can say, free agency, Leonard Williams, draft, Byron Murphy, like, here’s the consensus—they’re our type of people. It wasn’t asking the rest of the National Football League what we think about players. It was reflective of our own situation.”

The Seahawks could have invested in any position group and justified it as a necessary move to be better in the future. The traditional route could be to say, “Hey, any team with a quarterback who is 33 and not necessarily top-5 could at least turn that veteran into a bridge QB” a la the Falcons and Kirk Cousins. Seattle could have chosen an outside pass rusher like Dallas Turner or made waves with their second straight year of a first round wide receiver by taking a prospect like Brian Thomas, Jr..

I think a lot of moves would have been justifiable, in free agency or the draft.

But that’s not what the Seahawks did. Instead, Schneider has hired the top defensive coordinator candidate in the NFL to run the team+spent the most money on Leonard Williams+drafted an “undersized” defensive tackle with his rare opportunity to pick another prospect in the top-20. We can even say that Schneider has no idea if this will be his last top-20 pick ever, as practically all GMs and coaches must treat each big opportunity like it could be the last in their careers.

If it goes horribly wrong, it could be the reason its the last.

The Seahawks recognized that their greatest weakness in recent years has been on the defensive line and Schneider decided to invest in something they suck at instead of trying to turn “good” into “great” or “now” into “future” by picking a receiver, edge, corner, or quarterback. But if you just asked Claude Mathis about Murphy, you might ask yourself if the Seahawks just skipped “good” and “great”, and immediately went from having one of the worst interiors in the NFL to one of the best:

“I think I saw the potential ahead of the Power 5 coaches, because they thought he was too short. I got the last laugh,” Mathis said. “That’s what drove him even more, because guys were coming in there saying he was too short.”

“I have been talking to a lot of NFL scouts, like crazy, about this kid,” Mathis said. “I told them I never had an issue with him, I think he is mature, I think his motor never stops, and I think he could go to any state and be successful. He is going to represent your organization with class.”

If Byron Murphy is lacking anything in height, he has made up for it and then some with hype.

You can’t spell “beast mode” without a D and a T.