Seahawks 2023 draft: My Takes

6 things I've been consistent on from the beginning, including Anthony Richardson and Jalen Carter: Seaside Joe 1514

Whether you’ve been invested in Seaside Joe’s coverage of the Seahawks for the last one day or the last 1,514 days, it’s safe to say that most of you have at least been for the last three months of 2023 draft coverage. That’s why I want to recount and put on the record what I’ve been consistent about with regards to the draft, not because I intend to brag, but because I value the faith that you’ve put in Seaside Joe by allowing me into your homes day after day.

After day.

The fact that you are willing to have a relationship with Seaside Joe everyday is not something that I will take for granted. It’s a BIG deal, whether you are a free subscriber or a Regular Joe, because nothing in life is more valuable than time. You’re giving “ME”—which in combination with you reading this sentence transforms into “US”, the most powerful two-letter word in the English language—at least several minutes of your day?

That’s AMAZING!

The seedling of that relationship is the Seattle Seahawks and the rain on our soil for months now has been information about the 2023 NFL Draft, which is now only three days away from

(No, this is not a prediction that the Seahawks will select Zay Flowers.)

Why compare coverage from here to there to anywhere? Because your time IS valuable. Because we don’t live in a vacuum and you’re hearing this, that, these, and those, and sometimes I’m sure that conflicts with what Seaside Joe reports or believes. Which is not the same as saying that Seaside Joe always Seaside Knows—we get to be wrong sometimes around here also—but what is different here is that the reports are not based on “What’s being said on Twitter.”

We can do our best to ignore it, I think social media has had a detrimental effect on news, something that won’t be fully appreciated or understood for years.

That’s why “2023 draft beliefs” seem so erratic everywhere else. “How many QBs go in the top-four?” “Where will Jalen Carter go?” “Who is the number one pick?” I’ve seen writers who have covered Seahawks drafts for over 10 years give DRAMATICALLY different opinions on the 2023 class from one day to the next. It would be irresponsible of me and unfair to you if I didn’t adjust my opinions with new information—I’m lower on Will Anderson now than I was in the past, for example—but I think when you base reports on historical evidence and context clues instead of a personal bias for a particular outcome or the schizophrenic pace of Twitter, it’s easier to stay consistent. It was easier for me to be dead on right about the DK Metcalf contract, the Geno Smith contract, and a lot of correct guesses with the 2022 draft and the last two years of free agency.

And yes, I want you to be here at Seaside Joe, I want you to like it here, I want you to trust what you’re hearing here. Why would I want anything else?

This is a business. Yes. It is also where I have spent the last 1,514 days and I think about the Seaside Joe community and the next article all the time. We have gotten 20 times larger as a community since last March and I would be so grateful if we were 4 times bigger by the 2024 draft. It’s not enough for me to just have goals of numbers though—numbers are not what is important—it’s the quality of the newsletter itself.

If we keep focusing on the quality, I know everything else will follow.

With all of that being said, I want to touch base with what Seaside Joe has been consistent with the entire time, what has needed adjustment, and then we can compare those opinions to what actually happens in the draft from Thursday to Saturday. I’m a competitive person, whether that is measured internally (against the version of myself who would fail) or externally (against others), and I have actually drawn a lot of that inspiration from Pete Carroll over the last 13 years of covering the Seahawks.

I don’t see a downside to staying competitive. I don’t know of a single person who stopped being a Seahawks fan after the 2013 NFC Championship game because they found Richard Sherman’s interview with Erin Andrews too distasteful. I probably won’t be so bombastic, but let’s find out how Seaside Joe’s draft takes end up doing this weekend.

The NFL isn’t as high on QBs as the media

I have covered the 2023 quarterback class for two years, not for just the last four months. I went into the last college season with an extremely high grade on Bryce Young, a personal affinity for Grayson McCall, and a belief that C.J. Stroud could probably go early just based on reputation and not being a detriment to Ohio State. I was also expecting that Miami’s Tyler Van Dyke could take that next step to becoming an early pick, while I thought that NC State’s Devin Leary was one to keep an eye on.

Nothing has changed for me with Young and I’ve been consistent the entire time that he’s the prize of the 2023 NFL Draft. Not much has changed for me with Stroud, I think he’s just fine, a Jared Goff-like prospect. At no point did I buy that the Carolina Panthers traded up for C.J. Stroud. I’m comfortable on those evaluations, and unsurprised that the NFL isn’t as high on McCall (yet) as I am.

Van Dyke and Leary got worse, not better. Will Levis got worse and I didn’t understand the groundswell of hype after the 2021 season—if belief existed for the NFL, then I’m still confused why Levis didn’t declare last year, when there were no really good QB prospects. How could it be “smart” for Levis to go back to college for a fifth year, but also “smart” for Anthony Richardson to enter the NFL Draft before he’s ready?

I wrote in January that I was skeptical of Levis as a top-10 pick. Within the last few days, the perception of Levis has changed again, this time placing him as high as second overall with speculation surrounding the Colts as an ideal fit. I could see Indianapolis feeling like they’re in a position of having to select a quarterback and owner Jim Irsay strikes me as the type of person who would prefer a quarterback like Levis over quarterbacks like Stroud and Richardson, and I’ll leave it at that.

Anthony Richardson’s future is unpredictable

I didn’t have any opinions on Richardson because he didn’t start until last fall and then he played really poorly most of the time. He’s such an outlier that we have no precedent to go by and so I think most people are mocking him based on what they would do, which is a poor way to share information as if it’s anything other than your gut feeling. To say that Richardson is “a John Schneider type” is EXTREMELY choosy because you’re saying, “Well, I’ve decided that because there a couple of traits he shares with two quarterbacks who we believe Seattle was high on (Josh Allen, Patrick Mahomes), then he’s exactly his type!”

If we were to actually go by every quarterback who the Seahawks have actually drafted, signed, or traded for, then Richardson is a horrible fit. Schneider and Pete Carroll have long favored quarterbacks with experience, including Russell Wilson, Drew Lock, and Alex McGough, while Geno Smith brought his own specialized set of experiences and after a prolonged break still had almost 1,500 pass attempts in college.

Richardson has 393 career pass attempts. Pete adores players who are careful with the football and that was the main reason attributed to why Geno beat out Lock for the starting position last year, but Richardson doesn’t even know where the football is going half of the time. Former NFL GM Michael Lombardi raised the point that a team would be irresponsible to start Richardson because he’s so inexperienced and erratic that it would a detriment to everyone else on offense.

To which people will argue, “The Seahawks won’t be starting Richardson for one or two years.” So when does the development start? If he goes to Seattle, it’s not like Pete can give him reps with the ones or twos in training camp because Geno and Lock need those to be ready for next season. He wouldn’t even get reps in practice this year with the Seahawks. Where are the reps going to come from and how will he gain his necessary experience?

Is it that the Seahawks are going to wait and sacrifice their 2024 or 2025 seasons, at a time when they can supposedly afford to put a completely raw and undeveloped quarterback who needs a specialized offense built for him on the field? I don’t quite understand how the timeline is meant to work for Richardson in Seattle.

It’s hard to make sense of Richardson’s timeline anywhere, for that matter, but going to a good team seems to actually be less desirable than going to a team that is at least prepared to give him reps with the 2s, the backups. The Seahawks couldn’t have Richardson as a backup to Geno Smith next season, which is why Drew Lock needs those reps to be ready in case he’s needed. He can’t even split those reps with Richardson.

The Houston Texans, the Washington Moons, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers—a team that is headed for more financial issues in the future and may be ready to take a swing—I could see making at least a little more sense. I would even say that the Packers, because they don’t know what they have in Jordan Love and consider themselves to be a “Quarterback School” could be an option.

I’m not going to foolishly say that I know who is going to draft Anthony Richardson. I will say that predictions of him going to the Seahawks needs more explanation before it starts to make any rational sense.

It’s not a good year for a top-10 pick

For a long time I’ve said this is “not a good draft class” but what I should have said is that this class lacks blue chip talent. The top-15 here is not nearly as good as the top-15 of a couple years ago. I am not saying that I know for sure that 2024’s top-15 will be better, I’m just saying that these last two years have been super underwhelming relative to others in the past and I’ve been consistent about that which is why I’ve long said that if Seattle gets an opportunity to trade down for a future first round pick—they might just need to take it.

The flipside of that is that if it’s not a strong draft class, teams are not likely to sacrifice future first round capital to move up.

Jalen Carter’s draft value hasn’t changed

I said that if he just goes ninth or 10th overall, then the Jalen Carter story is “the stupidest draft narrative in NFL history.” And I’ve never bought that Carter would make it to nine; if his stock is still strong enough to go in the top-10, then it’s good enough to go in the top-five. Leave out your entire personal feelings on the matter and objectively analyze how NFL teams have operated for decades, balanced against how people rate Carter as a prospect (across the board, every analyst says he’s a generational defensive line talent) and the actual record of off-field transgressions.

It’s perfectly okay to personally feel that you wouldn’t draft Carter or even that you personally feel that Pete and John wouldn’t draft Carter, but if he’s good enough to go sixth or seventh, then he’s good enough to go third, fourth, or fifth. Or even second.

The entire time I’ve believed that the number one thing that could stop Carter from being Seattle’s pick is his availability at five. Nobody knows what the Texans are going to do with the second pick, but everyone assumes that if they’re not picking a QB that they’re deciding between Tyree Wilson and Will Anderson. I haven’t heard anyone say that Wilson or Anderson are better football players than Carter. If Houston doesn’t trade down, I don’t know if I’ve missed some reason that would have taken Carter off of the Texans board.

As I said, if he could be on the Seahawks and Lions and Raiders boards, he could definitely be on the Texans board.

Tyree Wilson vs. Will Anderson

I had Anderson at number one or two on the Seahawks big board for a long time, and expressed confusion for Wilson being projected as a top-five pick. I will say that my grade on Anderson is lower now and though I’ve come to appreciate Wilson’s skillset a little more in the last few weeks, I still wouldn’t put him in the top-10 of an average blue chip group draft class.

If the Seahawks pick Tyree Wilson, then I think this signals a shift back to more of a 4-3 defense, which could be on the horizon. It makes less sense to put him in the defense that Seattle ran last season.

If the Seahawks pick Anderson, where does he play? He often lined up as a 4i at Alabama, lining between the tackle and the guard, but that’s 100% not a suitable position for him in the NFL. However, most agree that he lacks the bend and first-step explosiveness to be a traditional edge rusher in a 3-4 defense. If you can agree that most of Anderson’s production came on stunts and in formations that simply won’t work in the NFL—or that will work but don’t need a top-5 pick used on an edge rusher like Anderson for them to work—and that he may have maximized his talents at Alabama, for me then he’s become a “reach” at fifth overall.

Ben Solak went on former NFL player Chris Long’s podcast and they both expressed some hesitation with these prospects. Solak said that Anderson is “a less explosive Josh Sweat”.

Perhaps the only reason we’re talking about Wilson is that the class is that weak, and the only reason we’re talking about Anderson is because we’ve been talking about him for the last three years. It’s funny, each of them seems like half of Jadeveon Clowney…Wilson for size, explosiveness and Anderson for hype and production…and even Clowney turned to be a poor value in the draft.

This is another reason I keep circling back to Carter, trading down, or…

Devon Witherspoon is the safest “Seahawks” prospect at 5

I’ve compared Witherspoon to Kam Chancellor in a smaller frame and said that Pete Carroll and John Schneider could really use him as a player to compare every other prospect to in the top-5. If at any point they’re not comfortable with Carter, Anderson, Wilson, or the QBs, then by all means just pick an awesome human being who can play run defense, pass coverage, fits an immediate role on defense, and brings attitude that Seattle’s been sorely lacking.

As a matter of fact, Albert Breer reported on Monday that Witherspoon and Paris Johnson are two prospects who could go as early as third overall and probably locks to go earlier than anticipated. Here’s a random top-five mock draft that’s not impossible: Bryce Young, Jalen Carter, Paris Johnson, Tyree Wilson, and then Devon Witherspoon to the Seahawks.

Should Seattle trade down in that scenario? Maybe. But the phone would have to be ringing.

Seahawks picking a WR in top-40 is plausible

I’ve stuck to the belief that receivers are a) more valuable than ever right now, b) Pete has shown a willingness to spend capital on receivers, and c) now is the right time to prepare for a potential departure of Tyler Lockett in the next two years. I’ve highlighted Zay Flowers as a potential target although I think I’ve softened on that and said other names could make sense and that in fact it could be better to favor a receiver with size.

I’ll also adjust my stance on the Seahawks picking a center in the top-40: Though Pete hasn’t done it before, reported interest/meeting with Joe Tippmann makes some sense and it could be necessary to use one of their first three picks to guarantee a center or guard of high regard.

Pete Carroll draft clues mock draft

Reminder: Come play Pete Carroll draft clues mock draft with us! I’ll say right now that we’ve had some answers locked in as accurate: Jalen Carter IS the first pick, but nobody has given the intended connection to “Warren G’s Regulate” yet. There were also correct answers on picks 3.83, 5.151, and 5.154. I’ll have some more clues coming in soon!

Subscribe to Seaside Joe to get those, to get the last minute draft news before Thursday, to read your predictions for post-draft Seahawks grades, and to help us keep growing as a community! We are nearing our goal of 500 paid subscribers so if you’ve enjoyed the last few months of draft coverage, consider a one-time $5 sign-up or go $55 for a whole year and you’ll already be paid for NEXT YEAR’S draft!