Seahawks draft targets: 10 first round prospects I'm circling for pick 16

Michael Penix headlines 10 NFL Draft prospects and 10 alternates who Seahawks fans should keep an eye on for the first round: Seaside Joe 1851

What the Seattle Seahawks will do in the first round of the draft this year will be much harder to predict than it was last year, when the team was picking fifth and we knew three of the top four selections would be quarterbacks. Now picking 16th, the number of different avenues the Seahawks could go in ranges in the dozens when you include potential trades.

I’ll choose 10 first round prospects and 10 first round alternates to circle as we continue to narrow down Seattle’s choices at #16.

Today’s Seaside Joe article—the 1,851st day in a row of sending a Seahawks newsletter which I want to mention if you were brought here for the first time today—is the longest I’ve written this year. Maybe one of the longest in the history of the newsletter, so I need to get right into it.

I’m going to share the first write-up—UW QB Michael Penix and the one factor in first round picks we shouldn’t ignore—for ALL of Seaside Joe subscribers, and then post the other nine prospects for Regular Joes subscribers. Join the Regular Joes exclusive, red-hot, underground, backroom, premium nightclub for only $5 per month or a discounted rate of $55 per year if you want to go behind the velvet rope (click here for it or to upgrade to Super Joes) and get over 100 bonus articles every season.

QB Michael Penix, Jr., Washington

I do not expect the Seahawks to pick Penix or any quarterback at 16, Schneider has alluded to the team feeling that they’re out of position for the first round QBs in this draft, but I think it would be unfair to entirely rule it out or ignore the reasons it could happen. I’ve written about Penix several times before: In January I noted that I’d be perfectly fine with Penix and this was before the team hired Ryan Grubb as OC, then a month later I wanted to make it clear that we shouldn’t fall for QB obsession with Penix and J.J. McCarthy.

As it turns out, the post hasn’t been necessary, as McCarthy is now expected to be unavailable and for whatever reason there isn’t really any buzz of Seattle being interested in Penix. Is that because Seattle isn’t interested in Penix or because they don’t want to appear interested in Penix? They’ve let it be known several times already that they’re interested in McCarthy.

What I would do? It doesn’t matter and to be honest this year I don’t really know; this draft cycle has been so much more confusing than past years. Is it that the “draft news market” has a supply that could never reach a perpetually increasing demand? I mean, how many times are you going to have a top-5 prospect who turns himself into the police during the NFL combine?

(Also, how did I miss whatever this handshake is between Goodell and Carter?)

I bet that behind the scenes, NFL team offices are probably quiet this time of year and there isn’t that much real news. While the GM has to give a lot of his attention to outgoing players and free agency (this year there was also a coaching search), don’t the scouts just kind of review tape and finalize reports? In that sense, the NFL may not be all that different from a highly-dedicated draft website or YouTuber.

But does the makeup of the first round actually change that much from January to April?

We didn’t need a combine to know that Penix would throw great, McCarthy would interview well, and Xavier Worthy would run fast. Maybe if a prospect went to the combine and had an actual speeding bullet hit him in the chest and bounce off of him, leaving a crumbled scrap of metal on the floor and no scrapes on his skin, his stock would go through the roof because of something that happened in Indianapolis.

This isn’t intended to be an anti-combine rant, just a thought that at this point I think we should fully expect NFL owners, maybe even some GMs and coaches, to be spending hours on YouTube watching breakdowns like this one of Michael Penix by Kurt Warner:

Remember, an NFL owner is usually just a person like you but richer. They have enough money that they can control the fate of a $6 billion football team, and what’s the point of that if you can’t make your own first round pick? That’s what I would do. Go to the GM, “this is my favorite QB in the draft”…

There’s been some talk this week that the Washington Moons want to pick J.J. McCarthy, not Drake Maye or Jayden Daniels, second overall because “executives from other teams who know GM Adam Peters well” expect him to do that. What Tom Pelissero left out of that report is that it might not even matter what Peters thinks. It definitely doesn’t matter AS MUCH AS what new owner Josh Harris thinks. Harris is no passive owner who bought a team only to get richer, he was sitting in on interviews with QBs at the combine.

I’m confident that some first round picks are merely the will of the owner, oftentimes when it’s a quarterback, and what else would you expect someone in that position to do other than watch many of the videos that you and I watch and that I share in this newsletter on Seaside Streams? That means that a team could pick someone like McCarthy, Penix, or Bo Nix simply because the owner watched the right YouTube video at the right (or wrong) time and became convinced by Warner or J.T. O’Sullivan or Chase Daniel that “everyone else is wrong and this is the only video that’s right.”

And the part of that which seems really damaging to me, and certainly a factor in the high rate of failed first round quarterbacks, is that the videos often directly contradict one another and have wildly different grades for the exact same plays. These evaluations can be coming from ex-quarterbacks and ex-coaches and still be on completely opposites side of the spectrum.

That’s why I always incorporate context clues into draft expectations and we can use last year’s “J.J. McCarthy” as an example and a segue: Right before the draft last year, Will Levis suddenly became the favorite to go second overall, not C.J. Stroud. Levis didn’t go second, or third, he went 33rd.

There were plenty of direct clues as to why I didn’t think Levis would be a top-10 pick, or a first round pick, on film. But I think we learned enough from the fact that if Levis was that special, he would have entered the draft a year earlier in a much weaker QB class. I can respect a player going back to school when he think he’s not ready, but in Levis’ case I think he just didn’t get reports from the league that he was expected to be an early pick and then in his fifth year he got worse, not better.

McCarthy is a better prospect than Levis and he could go in the top-10, I still feel as though I prefer Penix for the Seahawks. And the fact that Daniel Jeremiah recently had him going to the Raiders at 13 in a mock draft, I don’t know if that’s more because of what he’s heard from the league (Jeremiah had a few reports right before the draft that turned out really good for him last year) or if it’s this year’s version of Hendon Hooker being mocked to the Seahawks in the first round in 2023.

So is Penix even in consideration for a first round pick? I think he could be there on day two, but it only takes one team—or one owner—for a player to go much earlier than anticipated.

Epilogue: Remember, Pete Carroll explained his firing as a difference of opinion with ownership on what’s best for the team, and he said that ownership couldn’t understand his vision because they’re “not football people”. He said that “media opinions” got in their heads, which if we’re simplifying ownership down to one person, implies that Jody Allen is trusting outside sources more than she did the ex-head coach.

“How could you know other than what you guys talk about on the radios and what the articles say and what the pundits are drawing conclusions on?”

When I say that the Seahawks first round pick could be made by Jody Allen, I really mean it. Why couldn’t it? Did I miss a press conference when the team made it clear she’ll be totally hands off? She’s been pretty hands on, she fired Pete Carroll! Does John Schneider have the final say? Yeah, maybe. But he’ll also never have FINAL say for real, because he’s not the owner. Owners make first round picks, this owner fired Carroll and he said it was because he couldn’t undo what “media opinions” did her perception of him. If the Seahawks pick a QB in the first round, it could come from the top. If the Seahawks pick a QB in the first round, we should assume that it did.

Final thoughts on Penix:

This won’t be me campaigning for or against a certain prospect like McCarthy or Penix, because as I said earlier it can be hard to develop a sound opinion of this QB class when there are so many loud voices on the Internet giving conflicting reports on the same players and even the same plays. If the Seahawks draft a QB, whether that’s Penix or McCarthy or Spencer Rattler or Devin Leary or John Rhys Plumless, we have to have faith that the people picked to run the team made a sound decision. Because if we don’t give those people some credit, it wouldn’t even matter if they drafted Caleb Williams.

I will share context clues that give me more faith in Penix than I had in Levis: Penix went back to school because he had to have a prove-it year, and then he proved it. Levis went back to school and was much worse. Penix seems to throw the ball more accurately and make better decisions than Levis. However, I do not disregard that Penix had an insanely good supporting cast, an insanely good coaching staff (his HC is at Alabama, his OC is in the NFL), and it felt like he was on easy mode until Washington ran into Michigan.

Putting Penix in a situation with his college OC and not putting pressure on him to start games in 2024, the Seahawks are perhaps his best possible landing spot of all 32 teams. But it takes two: whether they care or not—whether Ryan Grubb’s influence even matters or not—is unknown.

I wouldn’t expect a team to start Michael Penix as a rookie and in Seattle that should be all but guaranteed: If the Seahawks pick Penix, he should be the third-string option behind Geno Smith and Sam Howell, or the backup if Seattle ends up moving on from Geno at any point. There’s been some pushback on teams keeping three QBs, but I feel like rosters are shifting back in that direction as the NFL has expanded to a 17-game schedule. Very few QBs will make it through an entire season.

I’m circling Penix on this list over other QB prospects because a) he’s someone I feel will be available and b) in my opinion he’s closer to QB4 than people give him credit for as attention has shifted to J.J. McCarthy and Bo Nix.

This is the longwinded way of me saying that I’m circling Michael Penix for the QB position over other first round options, but not necessarily that I’m circling Penix over ALL QBs, like Leary, Plumlee, Rattler, and so on. I find it unlikely that the Seahawks will pick a first round QB.

Oh and I swear this is the last note: Can anyone tell me the last time a team traded down in the first round and then picked a QB? It’s been an unwritten rule that you don’t risk losing a first round QB prospect by trading down, so projections that Seattle will trade down and pick Penix feel off to me.

You have made it to through the Michael Penix section (if you want more in-depth analysis of his film, I recommend watching this or this or this and there’s the Kurt Warner video above) and you may be wondering, “What’s next?” I will list nine more 2024 NFL Draft prospects I’m circling to keep an eye on over the next month, maybe one of them will become my “Devon Witherspoon pick” of the year, and at worst I’ll make this list easy to scroll if you just want to download some names into your brain.

Go behind the velvet rope to keep reading if you are not a premium member, you’ll get access to hundreds of additional Seahawks articles per year and you’ll support the most prolific team writer on the planet with a $5 subscription. There is only MORE bonus draft content to come after this and after the draft. No other writer will guarantee you 366 days of content in 2024.

These next nine names and nine alternates have surprises, giant humans, fast humans, weapons, the player getting compared to Witherspoon, and yes offensive linemen. SEVERAL OF THEM! Join the club to keep reading for the next 9 prospects to circle for the 2024 draft first round: