Tony Pauline: "Seahawks trade up for Desmond Ridder"

What rumors will Pauline deliver to Seahawks fans on Monday? 4/23/2023

Thursday not only marks the end of our long journey towards the 2023 NFL Draft—a momentous occasion that most of us have been waiting for since the end of the 2022 NFL Draft, if not the March 8th trade of Russell Wilson—it is also the one-year anniversary since Seaside Joe’s legendary deep dive into Tony Pauline’s history with draft rumors.

Here’s a snippet of what I wrote then and I hope you’re prepared for this to swing back around on Monday with a new set of rumors via Tony Pauline:

On Tuesday night, Tony Pauline reported a rumor about the Seattle Seahawks and a quarterback in this draft. I will not address the prospect until the end of the article because I don’t want readers to fall for the oldest trick in the rumor mill book: Get fans to argue about the player or the content of the rumor so that they’ll forget about verifying the validity of the rumor itself.

I’m tired of rumors. I’m over it! Aren’t we all a little sick and tired of having to go through the emotional and mental anguish of being fed false or untrue information? I’m not going as far as to call rumors “lies”, because I don’t want to imply or have people infer that every journalist is outright lying about having “sources” for the purpose of attention.

The two sides that rarely benefit from rumors: the players and the fans.

There is a lot to digest from that article, including a plea to hold people like Pauline accountable for their rumors, and that’s what I hope to do today. Before you hear or read Pauline’s latest Seahawks rumors on Monday, please keep this in mind from days before the 2022 draft:

Tony Pauline reported on Tuesday that the Saints have contacted the Seahawks about trading up into the top-10 for a wide receiver and in his mock, he has Seattle drafting Trevor Penning in the middle of the first round. He also has the Seahawks trading back into the first round for a quarterback.

That quarterback was Cincinnati’s Desmond Ridder. To which I said, “Well, that’s weird for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that I think Ridder should have a third round grade.”

What Rob Staton said was this:

This was quite a firm report from Pauline. He didn’t qualify it with any doubt or base-covering. It was delivered almost statement-like — presumably because he’s hearing this from numerous sources.

I wouldn’t be a fan of this. At all.

Let’s say that again: “He didn’t qualify it with any doubt or base-covering.”

No doubt. The Seahawks are going to trade up from 40 into the first round because they were worried they’d lose their chance at Ridder. In fact, Seattle passed on Ridder at 40, 41, and 72.

Read next: Get in your guesses for the Pete Carroll Draft Clues Mock Draft!

Maybe Pauline did hear that the Saints want to trade up for a wide receiver. New Orleans moved up to 11 in a deal with the Moons in order to select Chris Olave. But it was also the Saints who picked Trevor Penning. Perhaps the Seahawks didn’t need to fall back on Penning because they were happy to see that Charles Cross made it past the first eight teams in the draft order.

We will never know for sure. But we do know what Pauline’s record is on reporting rumors, including Seahawks-related rumors, going back to 2015. How do we know? I did my own homework and my own reporting on his track record.

Spoiler alert: