Byron Murphy II is better than...

"Once he’s on this track, he’s a train, you’re not stopping him": Seaside Joe 1993

Byron Murphy II is better than we expected and we already had high expectations. Though Murphy was picked 16th overall, the odds of him being considered a “top-five” rookie by the end of the season seem to be getting better by the day because for every one top-15 pick who could end up spending most of his year on the sidelines (an unfortunate reality for J.J. McCarthy now), it’s another tackle for a loss for Seattle’s versatile disruptor on the defensive line.

When I look at the first 15 picks in the draft, it’s not that I don’t see the potential for these players to be better than Murphy in the future (although I don’t think all of them have that potential), but there could be a narrative by the end of 2024 that the Seahawks “stole” a top-five pick.

It’s not just that McCarthy will miss the season with a knee injury, there are also the quarterbacks who teams plan to sit (Drake Maye, Michael Penix) and the probability that 11th overall pick Olu Fashanu will spend the year as a reserve as the team tries to get him to add weight to take over as left tackle in 2025. And then you’ve got the other three offensive tackles (Joe Alt is playing right for the Chargers, J.C. Latham and Taliese Fuaga are playing left for the Titans and Saints, respectively) and that position is just enormously difficult to play well in your first year. Tight end Brock Bowers could be splitting a job with Michael Mayer, LV’s second round pick last year. Rome Odunze is a rare top-10 pick who is only being asked to be the WR3. Malik Nabers could have it worse by being asked to make Daniel Jones look good.

A lot of people seem to agree that Bo Nix will struggle if his footwork and decision making in the regular season looks anything like it did in his first preseason game. This isn’t to say that Caleb Williams and Jayden Daniels are guaranteed to have a lot more success than Nix given the few examples we have of rookie quarterbacks not struggling against their first taste of NFL defenses.

This leaves me with Marvin Harrison, Jr. and Laiatu Latu.

Latu is in a similar position to Murphy because he’s not starting but he’s going to play a lot and he might already be the most disruptive player on his team’s defensive line. Both Latu and Murphy should get significant playing time and by having quality veteran teammates (Latu has DeForest Buckner and Grover Stewart) they could also be setup for some “easy” finishing moves that help juice their sack, QB pressure, and TFL numbers.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Harrison tops 1,400 yards for the Cardinals this season. That was setup to happen from the moment he was drafted.

Of these 15 players picked ahead of Murphy, surely some of them will have much better rookie season than what I just proposed could happen to them—Caleb could be a top-5 QB in the NFC, Alt could be as good for the Chargers as Rashawn Slater was as a rookie All-Pro, Bowers might be an immediate Pro Bowler—and however they do isn’t consequential with regards to how good Seattle has it with Byron Murphy.

I’m just saying that it might not take long for those people who said “Byron Murphy should have been a top-8 pick” to feel justified and proven correct.

There have already been a handful of videos analyzing Murphy’s preseason debut against the Chargers and while I do not typically allow “exhibition narratives” to seep into Seaside Joe’s mainframe, I’ll allow a little bit of over-optimism once in a while. Although if Murphy was a third round pick, I’d be more prone to pumping the brakes, so the fact that he was already viewed as the best defensive prospect in the draft makes me feel that much more comfortable in saying…

G’Damn folks, Byron Murphy actually might be the best defensive player in the 2024 draft.

“We know, Joe!”

Okay, cool.

All_22_Films: “Murphy can flourish”

I’ll start with a little of what All_22 said at the beginning about how Murphy’s already at an advantage because his defensive coordinator is Mike Macdonald, someone who has been creating “career years” for pass rushers over the last three seasons between college and the NFL:

“Macdonald and his staff there are going to create opportunities through scheme and the natural talent is here (with Byron Murphy). Once he’s on this track, he’s a train, you’re not stopping him. Macdonald’s scheme is reliant on rushing four and changing the coverage up post-snap for the quarterback such that they’re confused and have to go through the reads, you as a Seahawks fan will know early if things are working…The Ravens had 108 sacks between 2022-2023, and at Michigan in 2021, Aidan Hutchinson and David Ojabo had career years (playing for Macdonald)…(Seahawks pass rushers) are going to get paid here, it won’t be Murphy initially because he’s a rookie, it could be Boye Mafe.”

On the second play he analyzes, Murphy walks the center back into the QB on a bull rush and may do just enough to cause Easton Stick to throw a high pass by not being able to finish his follow-through, and the ball is deflected and then intercepted by Coby Bryant.

“I think he’s going to have a lot of wins against interior offensive linemen and cause a shit-ton of problems for pass protection schemes that don’t really want to keep a running back in to deal with a four-man rush.”

Murphy walks the center into Stick AGAIN on a different play and AGAIN almost causes an interception to Bryant. And look, I know #64 Brenden Jaimes is not a starting player in the league, so the good thing about these plays isn’t just that Murphy wins. It’s that if walking Jaimes back in a preseason game is this easy, perhaps Murphy won’t have a problem standing up actual starting NFL centers.

At 5:20 in the video, All_22 says that he thinks there might be a missed stunt by Myles Adams and Murphy, noting that Seahawks fans should expect to see this a lot in 2024 and that the linebacker will be responsible for creating a pick (like a basketball pick, not an INT), which in this case maybe should have been Tyrice Knight.

At 6:40, Murphy blows through #64 to make a TFL in the run game.

“Murphy gives Macdonald another subtle way to attack the offense. Meaning, we’re not just going to stand here and rush in the same lanes that we line up in. You’re going to have all these mug looks, fake blitzes from inside linebackers, nickel DBs, but these subtle games that you can play, whether it’s a pick exchange stunt on a pass play or stepping towards the back, away from the tight end, that both DTs are stepping, you never know what their call is and what their rationale is for doing it.”

So that’s a bit of what All_22 had to say about Murphy. He wasn’t the only one who was impressed though.

If you like positive pro-Seahawks optimism content like this that also shares a bunch of positive Seahawks takes from other people in their videos, please upgrade from free to Regular Joes for $5 per month. Or if you’re already subscribed, maybe today’s the day to go to Super Joes for only $10 per month (at a prorated rate if you’re already a member.)

Green Light w/Chris Long

“Former NFL player Chris Long: So it was a good day for (Latu and Dallas Turner), but the best day for me comes out of Seattle, Byron Murphy. This guy looks like a fucking football player.”

Former NFL player Beau Allen: One of my favorite guys coming off, he’s fucking twitchy. He’s so good lateral, he’s so quick laterally, and he does such a good job of generating power and lateral quickness out of a wide base too.

Long: That’s a really tough thing.”

Long plays a clip from the Chargers game with L.A. backed up on their one and Murphy is lined up at 2i between the guard and the center.

Long: “He’s got to step out to the B-gap, which is a tough one because you don’t want to change your stance. You want it to look the same and you got to get a lot of power off of that inside foot and push out there and he does. He gets skinny. I think what’s so impressive about him is a lot of guys just get washed here.

Former NFL player Nate Collins: But the reason why he doesn’t is he’s using his rip the right way. He’s kind of propelling himself forward back into that hole by locking on to that lineman who is over-pursuing. He could get his rip a little bit higher but even the fact that he’s using it the way he is, it pull him into the tackle.”

Long notes Murphy’s impressive play strength, his balance, and that it continously showed up on Saturday. I’ve linked the Murphy segment in the video above so to watch the rest of that, just click the video above. But we’ve known that Chris Long is a huge fan of Murphy since the draft (I can’t find it right now, but I know I had a Seaside Streams in the past where he was losing his mind over how good Murphy is) and that take seems to be doubled by what has happened so far.

ICYMI: Ryan Grubb’s offense, explained by a coordinator expert

The Legion of 12s

I’m always skeptical of new “Seahawks film” content creators because they’re often way too optimistic and couldn’t even IMAGINE a scenario in which a player on the Seahawks isn’t elite, but Legion of 12s has won me over. His videos come across as reasonable and informative.

“I think the thing that makes Murphy a unique player is the fact that he can absolutely play nose tackle for you, but he’s also quick and explosive enough to play three-technique. Very few players in the league can do both of these roles and Murphy showed that he is great at both of them in his debut.”

On an inside zone run against the Seahawks, in which Murphy is lined up in 2i:

“They can’t go through Murphy, he completely destroys the combo block (two vs. one) that they try to move him with. This was something he showed in college and it’s great to see him demonstrate it in the NFL. He uses a dead leg technique a lot, he has the instincts and quickness to recognize this is going to be a double team almost instantly and he drops his near leg to the ground. This is the dead leg technique and it basically anchors him to the ground and that has been one of his cheat codes that allows him to play far above his weight class on the inside.”

I may have actually learned a little bit more about playing DT from a random YouTuber who doesn’t seem to have an NFL background than I did from Long, which is saying a lot for Legion of 12s. Although, I’m just sharing small snippets from each video. Watch them in their entirety to not miss the full breakdowns of Murphy.

The Football Scout

The Football Scout would be one of those accounts that I mentioned earlier who seems to only ever point out the positives and might be a little too optimistic. This might be that TFS only does videos on players he really likes and that’s fine, but I would say that for example, Olu Oluwatimi hasn’t turned into the top-tier starting center that the TFS essentially said he would be by now. And it’s fine to be wrong, it just makes me really analyze and think about what TFS is saying (and what he’s not saying). I’ll still share his videos though, while I think Top Billin’, for example, is an entertainment-only YouTuber that I’ll probably start leaving out of Seaside Streams.

In the case of Murphy though, it’s hard to imagine that The Football Scout’s positive analysis of him isn’t acceptable given that “Byron Murphy might be amazing” is basically a universal thought right now

I am unfamiliar with Saturday Morning Inspection and I actually haven’t watched this video yet, but might as well include it before I hit send on this newsletter:

Tell me in the comments what you think of this video and the other ones:

This talk seems to have continued during Seattle’s joint practices with the Titans this week as a player who Tennessee is struggling to contain with their revamped offensive line.

We don’t know yet just how good Byron Murphy is going to be, all we know is that he is every bit as exciting as a prospect picked 16th overall as he would have been if he was picked 6th overall.