Seahawks 2022 NFL Draft: 5 Day 3 prospects to watch

Seaside Joe 1120: Amare Barno, Coby Bryant, Sam Williams, Luke Goedeke, and Daniel Hardy

One thing I know for sure this morning is that nobody needs to read my take on Will Smith and Chris Rock. The Twitter machines makes sure to exhaust every possible ounce of juice in a story within hours of the moment, no matter how huge or unbelievable whatever “it” is. Last night, I couldn’t stop thinking about the meaning behind the slap and the ramifications that will come out of it.

But this morning, I think I’m overall just sad that nobody gives a fuck about the Oscars anymore.

CODA won Best Picture, by the way. A shocking result for the category that used to be the main reason that I tuned into the Oscars, but now only an afterthought of an afterthought for a TV show that is headed towards an inevitable cancellation. Most people probably didn’t even realize that coverage of the Golden Globes was cancelled last year, and the Oscars’ slight bump in 2022 ratings is not enough to make people forget that the event is still drawing in less than 25% of the audience it had a decade ago.

It’s just hard to get people to tune into an awards show when they don’t know anything about the potential awards recipients. Every industry has an awards show. There’s a reason you probably don’t tune into the 2022 Plumbies (for plumbers) or the 150th annual Oil Drillers Globes (neither of these are real, as far as I know).

25 years ago, all you had to do was watch Forrest Gump, Pulp Fiction, The Shawshank Redemption, Quiz Show, and Four Weddings and a Funeral—and the majority of us have seen at least three of those five movies—and you were set for the Oscars.

This year, you had 10 choices, but I’d bet you will have a difficult time finding people who saw three of the nominees. I was lucky to hit the three-mark this year (Dune, The Power of the Dog, and CODA) and I wouldn’t have seen CODA if it weren’t for the fact that I’m in the Writer’s Guild and they send me screeners. I received screeners for Licorice Pizza, West Side Story, King Richard, and Nightmare Alley, while I could easily watch Belfast, Don’t Look Up, and now Drive My Car on streaming services.

All 10 movies were at my fingertips. The interest to click ‘PLAY’ was not.

So count me among those who would probably click an article about Will Smith and Chris Rock over an article about whoever won Best Actress (Jessica Chastain for The Eyes of Tammy Faye, another movie that I saw and did happen to like) or the “snubs and flubs.” It doesn’t mean that I have to like the fact that the Oscars are drowning and that Pulp Fiction, The Shawshank Redemption, Quiz Show, and Forrest Gump are infinitely more entertaining films than what Hollywood has delivered in the last decade.

The unfortunate outcome of Hollywood’s demise is that you can’t get Twitter to tweet about a category or a nominee. Beyond the fact that Twitter hasn’t seen most of the movies and to this minute have zero or almost-zero awareness of half of the supporting actor nominees (Troy Kotsur, Ciaran Hands, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Jessie Buckley, Aunjanue Ellis, and Ariana Debose are all Oscar-nominated actors as of this year), users also know that the hottest Oscar moments of the past decade are “Adele Dazeem” by John Travolta and The Great Moonlight/La La Land Fuck Up of 2017.

Not that the Oscars weren’t always popularized more by stupidity than any appreciation of talent and art: What would Twitter have done with the streaker moment of 1974 or Marlon Brando’s “Thanks, but no thanks” non-appearance in 1973?

Twitter would’ve broken as much for Brando as it did for Will Smith, but does the presence of Twitter now drive the Oscars to create viral moments in the hope that they can appeal to “What’s trending?”

That’s related to my concern with how people tweet and write about the NFL Draft and prospects in the NFL Draft, especially the quarterbacks. How much of our worldview is being distorted by users on Twitter who are not driven by the truth, but are instead motivated to tweet that which will get them retweeted?

As I’ve written on here recently, Malik Willis has skyrocketed from a quarterback who fell out of first round draft consideration during his senior season at Liberty to being touted as a “top-10 lock” despite not really participating in the NFL Scouting Combine and the only thing we really have to go off of is a single throw at his pro day and hearsay.

The only “evidence” we have that Willis’s stock has gone up is that “apparently according to Twitter, Malik Willis’s stock has gone up!”

Zachary Smith @ZacharySmithPGH

Mike Tomlin watching Malik Willis’ Pro Day

Ari Meirov @MySportsUpdate

Malik Willis with another bomb at his Pro Day and look at him celebrating after. Teams are going to fall in love with this guy.

PFF @PFF

It’s impossible to root against Malik Willis 🚀

Consider what James Dator wrote about Malik Willis during the Senior Bowl:

Willis was the talk of the town during practice week, with everyone in attendance gushing about his athleticism and willingness to absorb coaching. It’s a rare example of a quarterback garnering tremendous hype without the college stats, or tape to really back it up.

That’s a really amazing statement to make about a quarterback who is often mocked to the Detroit Lions at 2, the Carolina Panthers at 6, and the Seattle Seahawks at 9.

“Hey look, I didn’t see Don’t Look Up, but from what critics are telling me about Jonah Hill and Leonardo DiCaprio, this is a movie that could really be good if you watch it five or six more times.”

Consider what Dator wrote about Willis at the Senior Bowl shortly after that paragraph:

In the passing game Willis was very average, just going 2-for-4 for 11 yards.

Then this for the next QB on his list:

Pickett was perfect in the Senior Bowl, going 6-for-6 for 89 yards and a touchdown. Still, he leaves the game without much hype.

It was only a month earlier that Dator mocked Willis to the Falcons at 8 and the top-ranked comment was this:

Atlanta - "Top Needs": Edge, OL

*Kayvon Thibodeaux (like you mentioned, potential top pick) still on the board*

Gives Atlanta Malik Willis....LMFAO. What?!

What changed then between January and February, between February and March, and what will change between March and April 25th?

As far as I can tell, the only thing that has become readily apparent about Willis in the last two months is that tweets about Malik Willis being a great prospect are popular. Tweets about Willis being overrated or a bad prospect are not popular. And tweets about the Seahawks drafting anybody other than a quarterback, like Evan Neal, Sauce Gardner, or even Kayvon Thibodeaux, are just kind of “too real to be interesting.”

Malik Willis may be a perfectly awesome dude. A cool guy, a fun guy, and if he fixes five or six monumental issues in his game, a great quarterback in the NFL one day. But being a “good dude” or a fantastic athlete is not something that separates Willis from Thibodeaux, Neal, Gardner, or most NFL draft prospects. Kayvon Thibodeaux is both a unique athlete and a player with a magnetizing personality. He’s also a much better football prospect and a better fit for a team like the Seahawks, and there’s only one thing that he’s not as compared to Willis:

He’s not a quarterback.

NFL @NFL

Hard not to love @malikwillis. @LibertyFootball

Growing up, there were always two TV events that I anticipated probably more than any other: The Oscars and the NFL Draft.

The Academy Awards have tanked for a variety of reasons, one of which is undoubtedly that the quality of films has deteriorated and that the “shared experience” has evaporated as our attention spans have shrunk at the same time that our time has been splintered amongst a vast landscape of content options.

So when the Oscars happen, people tweet about things that connect with other people: You can’t tweet about CODA because even if you saw CODA, most of your followers probably didn’t. You can tweet about Will Smith and Chris Rock because we all know who those people are and “What the fuck just happened?”

I don’t believe that the quality of professional football has taken nearly as many hits as Hollywood has, but I do know that I’ve heard from many people that for various off-field and on-field reasons, interest is on the verge of waning. Will this lead more people to tweet about things that follow a trend and to set a narrative that doesn’t really exist in the interest of POPULARITY over the search for TRUTH?

I am hopeful that the NFL Draft doesn’t become the same shitshow that I watched (barely half of) last night.

What did you think of the Oscars last night? Did you watch any of the movies? What was your favorite movie of 2021? Tell me in the comments!

But I don’t just want to talk about Malik Willis and the first round prospects today. I have spent and will spend a lot of time writing, podcasting, and video-ing about the Seahawks’ picks at 9, 40, and 41—what I’ve learned recently is that I’m still at a loss when I get to mocking players to Seattle on day three.

On Sunday, I posted two mock drafts for the Seahawks (go here to watch/read— and please give answers to the VERY SHORT Seahawks 7-round mock survey also!) but I know that I have a lot more research to do before I can adequately assess if those are good picks or not when we get to Seattle’s day three selections. I picked the players that I knew of, but I also had to avoid many players who I did not know anything about.

I’ll try to now start massaging some of these names into your brain before day three begins in a few weeks. That’s one area of the draft where Seaside Joe will attempt to separate itself from some other Seahawks coverage you can find, so do us a favor and subscribe, share, and help us reach a wider audience of Seattle Seahawks fans.

If you like the work on the draft, consider buying me a coffee for draft month and if you aren’t satisfied with the content, I owe you a cup of Joe. I promise you will only find content at Seaside Joe that goes off of reality, not off of Twitter narratives. Let’s show them that’s where our support really belongs:

LB Amare Barno

When I profiled the best prospects coming out of the ACC last year, Barno was one of the few at Virginia Tech that was worth writing about. The 6’4, 246 lb pass rusher posted exceptional athletic numbers at the combine and that has people talking about him again after a lackluster final season with the Hokies.

Kent Lee Platte @MathBomb

Amare Barno is a DE prospect in the 2022 draft class. He scored a 9.72 RAS out of a possible 10.00. This ranked 41 out of 1428 DE from 1987 to 2022. ras.football/ras-informatio… #RAS

Barno had 16 tackles for a loss and 6.5 sacks in 11 games in 2020, but only 5.5 TFL and 3.5 sacks in 10 games last season.

One of the most interesting draft analysts I know of is actually not famous at all. At Turf Show Times, the LA Rams’ SB Nation community, a user named Ferragamo15 posts dozens of draft profiles every single year. Here’s what he said about Barno:

Pro Comparison and Grade

Chris Rumph (4th round 2021 Chargers, Duke), Late round grade.

Rumph was another polarizing prospect. Lance Zierlein really liked him, comparing him to Leonard Floyd and had a high, 6.31, draft grade on him. Other boards were considerably lower on Rumph. I like Rumph better than Barno, but some of their pros and cons are similar.

Amare Barno isn't a very dangerous pass rusher right now. LZ is correct in saying that Barno has a low floor, but I'm not convinced that Barno is even a high ceiling prospect. If Ogbonnia Okoronkwo (5th round 2018) and Barno were in the same draft, with zero hesitation I would select Obo ahead of Barno.

Keep in mind that we really don’t know what Chris Rumph is yet; as a rookie in 2021, Rumph had 19 tackles and one sack in limited action. If Barno is on the board when the Seahawks are selecting at 116 in the fourth round or 153 in the fifth (of course, we know John Schneider is likely to jump around the draft with trades), I’m sure he’ll be a popular “Go get this guy!” response from fans.

Even if Seattle picks an edge rusher in the first round, I don’t expect Schneider to stop looking for more chances to fix the pass rush (or to adjust to a 3-4) on days two and three. The Bills, for example, doubled-up on edge rushers in the first and second round last year, then they also signed Von Miller in 2022.

CB Coby Bryant

Twitter isn’t doing yet. Not yet. Most of Twitter doesn’t know about “Coby Bryant” yet. Wait until Day 2 or Day 3 of the draft. Sigh. That’s probably the saddest thing of all about Twitter: You’re sooooo predictable.

Anyways, he has a famous name. Moving on.

The name you really want to associate next to Coby Bryant is “Sauce Gardner” because despite the fact that Bryant won the Jim Thorpe Award (best DB in college football), it’s Sauce who is being projected as a first round pick. We see this all the time in the draft: “Is the counterpart to the draft’s elite prospect also a good prospect? In fact, is he a better prospect?” Another example from this year would be Aidan Hutchinson and David Ojabo.

Coby Bryant is not a better prospect than Gardner. He’s a good one though.

Bryant doesn’t have the length, size, or speed of Bryant. His arms come in under 31” and his 4.54 40-yard dash is okay, but a far step behind Tariq Woolen at the other “sleepers” at the position this year.

As a day three pick, Coby Bryant could eventually prove that technique wins out over athleticism. Maybe a future in the slot? Definitely a worthy presence in the locker room and in the media. Ferragamo’s thoughts:

Pro Comparison and Grade

Byron Murphy (Early 2nd round pick 2019 Cardinals, Washington), 4th round.

Murphy was 5'11'' tall, 190 pounds, 30 1/8'' arms, and ran 4.55 sec in the 40. LZ gave him a 1st round grade. Murphy has done his best work as a slot CB, but also has played as an outside CB. He had a 59.7 PFF grade last season and had 4 INTs. He really struggled as a rookie and has been an average player since then.

Bryant also reminds me of a player named Ross Cockrell, who played at Duke.

DL Sam Williams

Now onto the guy who has probably the opposite name of “Coby Bryant” because what could be more ordinary than Sam Williams? He’ll be hard to Google—but at least he is an athlete.

Tyler Komis @TylerKomis

Sam Williams working with DC Dan Quinn

Should the Seahawks favor Barno or Williams?

His grade would typically translate to being a 2nd round pick. Recent examples include LJ Collier 6.30 (29th overall pick 2019), AJ Epenesa 6.35 (2nd rd 2020), Darrell Taylor 6.30 (2nd rd 2020), Josh Uche 6.31 (2nd rd 2020), Carlos Basham 6.29 (2nd rd 2021) and Joseph Ossai 6.27 (top of 3rd rd 2021).

Williams is as much of an athletic freak as Amare Barno, perhaps more so. Weighing 261 pounds at the Combine, Williams ran a blazing 4.46 sec in the 40. At nearly the same weight at his Pro Day, Williams had a 4.33 sec shuttle time (better than Barno), 6.93 sec 3 cone (only slightly slower than Tutu Atwell's time) did 25 bench reps and had a 36'' vert jump (nearly the same as Barno).

In a deep edge class, Williams could fall to Seattle on day three. But we also can’t put it past Pete Carroll to recommend a player like Sam Williams for day two, or even round two.

OL Luke Goedeke

What a great story he is. Goedeke was the furthest thing you could get from being an NFL Draft prospect a few years ago. He walked on as a tight end at Wisconsin-Stevens Point in 2017, added weight and moved to tackle in 2019, and as of today he’s one of the best guard prospects in this draft.

He could be a fierce run blocker for Carroll and some say he might be even better than “first round” teammate Bernhard Raimann:

Lance Zierlein 6.22 draft grade (exactly the same as Charlie Kolar, the TE), compared to Jets offensive lineman, Connor McGovern, who was a 5th round pick by the Broncos out of Missouri in 2016. McGovern had a 75.9 PFF grade last year, ranking as the 9th best center in the NFL. Compare draft grade to Ohio State guard, Wyatt Davis 6.24 (3rd round 2021) and Damien Lewis 6.22 (early 3rd round 2020), so LZ's grade would roughly translate to Goedeke being a 3rd round prospect.

LZ calls Goedeke a "rancorous run blocker" with a surly field demeanor, sustains and finishes blocks like an NFL vet, strength and quickness to succeed in any run scheme, lacks length, has issues with counter moves, will lunge against speed. Quoted a former NFL exec who predicted that he'll have a better pro career than Bernhard Raimann.

Is Goedeke (I don’t know how to pronounce but I like to think it’s the same as “geoduck.”) Maybe Seattle will take him and we’ll find out.

EDGE Daniel Hardy

Now we are really digging deep. Hardy doesn’t even have an NFL.com page yet. All he has instead is a remarkable final season at Montana State (24.5 tackles for a loss, 16.5 sacks in 15 games) and a second team All-America honor. Similar to Coby and Sauce, Hardy’s maybe even only getting his name mentioned because of a teammate: Troy Andersen, who I mocked to the Seahawks in the third round on Sunday.

Here’s what Venie Randy Soares wrote about Hardy at TST recently:

He has an explosive first step, great bend and flexibility to get around the corner. He plays the game with a hell-bent-for-leather style. Right now, he is able to run right by most of his current competition, but shows the ability to quickly change direction, keep his pads low for leverage, and keep his eyes on the ball to maximize his angles. All transferable traits to the pro game. His hand fighting skills are good, when he uses them. His arms were measured at the NFLPA Collegiate Bowl at 34”, with an 80” wingspan and he will have to use that length and his upper body strength at the next level.

Hardy may be on track for round seven or UDFA status. That should make him a viable option for the Seahawks at a low cost. At least now we know the name.