‘Couldn’t the Seahawks draft a WR?’

Challenging my own proclamation that Seattle won't pick a receiver next month

How often is the plot of a romcom been centered around bad timing? Annie Hall, Serendipity, Harry Met Sally, and so on; guy meets gal, they fall for each other, but he’s moving to London and she’s getting married next week. In The Graduate or Harold and Maude, timing was off by being born decades apart.

Some of you are saying, “I’m not into romantic stuff! grunt, grunt, grunt! Power tools!”

That’s cool too. Maybe then you’d prefer Shakespeare, the original Bill Simmons who once wrote:

Am I so round with you as you with me,
That like a football you do spurn me thus?
You spurn me hence, and he will spurn me hither.
If I last in this service, you must case me in leather.

(In Shakespeare’s day, “mob football” was the second-deadliest sport in the world. Now it’s the No Fun League!)

Well what is the ultimate bad timing in literary history?

Guy meets girl, girl fakes death, guy doesn’t fake death, girl doesn’t fake death.

In life, in art, and in building a competitive football roster under the salary cap, timing is as paramount as talent.

Seaside Joe gets things wrong too. Last year, I wrote off Grey Zabel as a first round option because it went against Seattle’s record of how they valued guards in the past. In 2022, I wrote off Charles Cross early in the process because it went against Seattle’s typical athletic measurements for tackles.

So it’s important for me as a messenger of Seahawks news and analysis to YOU to get ahead of me being wrong by challenging my own assertions as to what John Schneider is likely or unlikely to do in the draft.

If I didn’t believe what I wrote is more likely than to be true than false, I wouldn’t waste your time with it. But I’m never going to be 100%. At worst, I can at least hedge my bets.

‘Couldn’t the Seahawks draft a WR?’

On Tuesday, I wrote about Seattle’s situation at receiver next season and why I would be shocked if the Seahawks drafted one next month, let alone in the first round. Moot point because nobody thinks the Seahawks are going to pick a receiver?

Todd McShay has mocked the Seahawks picking receiver KC Concepcion in the first round.

This is an industry that follows the leader so I would not be surprised if much more steam builds towards Seattle picking a receiver. And if you listen to some people, like Josh Norris at Underdog Fantasy, you could be easily convinced that Concepcion is the most underrated first round prospect.

I was compelled to believe.

But the obstacle between the Seahawks and a receiver pick is not whether or not Seattle could land a quality prospect at the position at 32. It’s “When and where do you play KC Concepcion if you’re Brian Fleury?”

Because McShay’s argument is intentionally incomplete:

“He’ll emerge in a rotation with JSN and Rashid Shaheed (as Cooper Kupp nears the end).”

Key phrase: NEARS the end.

As the Seahawks are financially structured, Kupp isn’t going anywhere in 2026. If Seattle wanted to get younger and cheaper at receiver this year then all they had to do was release Kupp before his guarantee kicked in. They didn’t. And now he’s making $9 million guaranteed + $4.5 million if he’s on the roster all year.

So if Seattle did draft Concepcion or another receiver at pick 32, they’d definitely be creating an emotional logjam:

1) Kupp is a great teammate but he doesn’t want to lose his job.

2) A rookie first round pick doesn’t expect to ride the bench for a year.

ESPECIALLY at wide receiver. Early pick rookie receivers expect to play, they expect to start, they expect to be targeted, and the teams expect it too.

When first or second round receiver do not play as rookies, for any reason, it’s almost always because it’s the start of a disappointing career.

Since 2014, there have been 114 receivers drafted in the first two rounds.

• 29 of those players had under 300 yards as a rookie

• The only three of those 29 players who I’d call “good” would be Mike Williams (Chargers), Jameson Williams, and Curtis Samuel*

• All 3 of those players lost time as rookies due to injury, not to being stashed

*Are any of those three players even that exceptional?

The majority of receivers who can’t get a foothold as rookies almost never end up standing on their own two feet with few exceptions (Davante Adams being a rare year three breakout) so if the Seahawks attempted to jam a rookie receiver behind Kupp and tell him “WAIT!” there’s a good chance that he’ll end up being Quentin Johnston or Treylon Burks or Rashod Bateman.

Who, not for nothing, were all exceptional prospects in their own right! I was a huge fan of Bateman especially, a player I think got his best years wasted by the Baltimore Ravens. It is so important to not waste ANY rookie contract years for receivers because the best ones in the league usually are on their rookie contracts.

Look no further than DK Metcalf, a receiver who was better in the beginning of his Seahawks career than towards the end of it.

All that being said…

“Couldn’t the Seahawks draft a WR?”’

Sure and if they do then I think Seattle needs to trade or even release Cooper Kupp. They probably won’t be able to trade him ($13 million salary) so then the Seahawks would need to cut him and eat $17 million in dead cap because how long does he willingly ride the bench before the two sides “mutually agree” to part ways?

There is NO ROOM for both Kupp and a rookie first or second round WR:

—The Seahawks were 29th in pass attempts last season and Kupp was second on the team with 70 targets.

—Seattle paid JSN $42 million per season and Shaheed $18 million per season to be their top two receivers for at least the next couple of years. If Shaheed were to get only five targets per game, that alone would mean 85 targets. A.J. Barner averaged five targets per game in the second half of the year, so he could get 85 targets too.

—If you had JSN with 170 targets and those two with a combined 170 targets, that adds up to 340 targets, which would only leave 137 more targets if Sam Darnold hit his same total from last season.

It would be normal for HALF of those remaining targets to go to running backs. Then what about Tory Horton? What about Elijah Arroyo?

(There should be plenty of intriguing WR prospects on the board at 32, like Makai Lemon or Denzel Boston, but that doesn’t mean the Seahawks will be able to shoot their shot.)

Even if you gave Darnold a 10-percent increase in attempts and added 50 more passes to his total that would still make it VERY TOUGH to include Kupp, Horton, and Arroyo into a presumed target share for the JSN (the highest-paid receiver in the NFL), Shaheed, and Barner.

That’s just WITHOUT drafting a first or second round receiver. Which is why I say that any mock draft like McShay’s makes no sense to me unless the Seahawks get rid of Kupp because there’s a huge difference between being near the end or actually at the end.

Attempting to “stash” Concepcion or Boston on the roster as WR6 is like telling your spouse that you want to get divorced in a year or two, but not now, and also you want to date other people immediately, but your partner isn’t allowed to.

That cake-eat-too mentality is just begging to become a Shakespeare tragedy. There is at least perhaps some resemblance between Kupp and Shakespeare:

Coincidentally this scenario reminds me of when Kupp’s former Rams teammate Robert Woods went to the Houston Texans in 2023 to help mentor a deep and talented room of younger receivers for C.J. Stroud:

• Woods had 666 snaps that season, second most on the team and just three behind leader Nico Collins

• Woods caught 40 passes for 426 yards and 1 TD on 75 targets

• Houston drafted Tank Dell in round 3 and Xavier Hutchinson in round 6

• Houston drafted John Metchie in the second round a year earlier

Was it worth it to give Woods that many snaps and that many targets when he was the oldest and least valuable receiver on the roster just because he’s a good mentor? Would Metchie and Hutchinson have been better served to just get more game reps? Even the younger Noah Brown had a better season with the Texans that year than Woods and got less playing time.

If the Seahawks drafted Concepcion, Kupp’s mentorship can’t touch the value that a talented rookie would get by stealing all of Kupp’s snaps and starting right away. If Kupp starts over Concepcion (or whomever), he’s hurting more than he’s helping.

And if the team benched Kupp and kept him on the roster because there aren’t significant savings, now what’s the point the Seahawks are trying to make? That “he’s old and we know it!”?

That’s like when a company fires the CEO and gives him a fake title so he can save face on his way out…

Frankly, do I think the Seahawks would be better next season and beyond if they replaced Kupp with KC Concepcion or Denzel Boston or some other first round receiver who their scouts approved as “the guy”, the pass catcher with the most value when they’re on the clock?

YES.

No question! I was among those arguing before last season that Kupp’s $17 million salary was an overpay for a 32-year-old receiver with a consistent track record for getting injured. His 47 catches on 70 targets with 593 yards in the regular season is eerily similar to Woods’ second-to-final season with the Texans…which also perfectly aligns with keeping an over the hill receiver for longer than you should because:

-he’s a good mentor

-he’s a good blocker

-he does the things that don’t show up on a box score

-you financially committed to him for two seasons

I just don’t think the Seahawks felt like they could get away with cutting Kupp after the Super Bowl because they made a promise to him that despite the team being well within their rights to do so, they would give him his 2026 guarantee to avoid looking as bad as the Ravens for renegging on the Maxx Crosby trade.

But just because the Seahawks let Kupp get the $9 million guaranteed, it does not force Seattle to let Kupp get 70 targets next season.

Perhaps there is some side of Schneider that thinks the Seahawks could draft another WR1 (32 is not that much later than 20, which is where they got JSN) this year and then part ways with Kupp despite not saving any money from it.

At this point, the salary cap space for Kupp IS gone — and it’s not like Seattle’s $28-$32 million in cap space is prohibitive to continue making moves — and doubling down on that investment by giving him more opportunities than Horton and Shaheed and Arroyo could be the biggest mistake of all.

Seahawks fans should all like Kupp and appreciate Kupp for his contributions, especially in the playoffs, but isn’t the high-level chess move here to identify a weakness and upgrade it? Certainly all the non-JSN receivers from last season would be on that list to some degree, so calling wide receiver a “need” is fair game. For Todd McShay and for anyone else.

The problem though isn’t if it’s a need. The problem is if wide receiver even has an availability. And as long as Kupp is on the roster, Seattle has no room at the Inn route.

Plus, we also know that every single draft class is another opportunity to find a superstar wide receiver anywhere in the top-50 picks. Every. Single. Year.

So do I think the Seahawks will draft a wide receiver? Still no.

“Stashing” would just flat out be a bad move and I don’t think Schneider makes moves that bad. However, if Seattle is willing to let Kupp’s job dangle on the line in training camp and cut him (unless an injury makes the decision for them), then yes, receiver makes sense as a need.

Now that would be serendipity.

Seaside Joe 2577