Seahawks fan survey: Best Player Available or Need?

Prospects and Scenarios for the Seahawks 2024 draft, getting your opinion on BPA vs need: Seaside Joe 1877

Should your favorite NFL team focus its attention in the first round on picking the absolute best player available regardless of position or addressing “positional needs” with the best prospects at those specific positions? There isn’t necessarily an easy answer (John Schneider says the Seahawks will not draft for needs until the sixth and seventh rounds) but I’ve noticed recently that without challenging what fans tend to say about these concepts that the mock drafts and the reactions to mock drafts can be contradictory.

Most fans want the best prospects because they should turn out to be the best players more often than not. And yet if there’s a mock draft that doesn’t have the Seahawks addressing a position need like guard, center, or defensive tackle (which does have six or seven players already assumed to make the 2024 roster) it appears that there’s often a backlash to that: “How can the Seahawks pick a cornerback when what they really need is an interior offensive lineman?”

So which is: Do you want the Seahawks to pick the best player available regardless of need (let’s say LSU wide receiver Brian Thomas Jr.) or the best player at a specific position like guard/center (for example, Duke OL Graham Barton)?

Let’s find out through the surveys.

1st round - Best Player or Biggest Need?

The question that sets the base for all other questions: Should the Seahawks ignore all needs with pick 16 (or their first pick) or should they make sure that whoever they pick is someone who has an opportunity to start right away at a position of “need”?

Marvin Harrison or Joe Alt?

Marvin Harrison, Jr. is a wide receiver out of Ohio State who is expected to be the first receiver and first non-quarterback drafted on Thursday. Even if Malik Nabers and/or Rome Odunze go first, it seems hard to believe that Harrison will get past the Giants at 6 or that a team wouldn’t trade up for him at that point. So this is not a player who the Seahawks can have barring an unexpected shocker and the same goes for Joe Alt.

I heard former NFL GM Randy Mueller recently say that Alt is the second-best prospect in the entire draft and despite his 6’8 height (a little tall for a tackle, easier to push over) that he plays shorter and is so refined that he should succeed at the next level at either left or right tackle.

So Seattle won’t likely get near either of these prospects but go on this boat ride with me as a thought experiment: A number one wide receiver (which isn’t an immediate need but could help the Seahawks long-term to replace Tyler Lockett) or an offensive tackle who could be better than Charles Cross or insure against the loss of Abe Lucas. Tackle also isn’t a huge “need” but the offensive line is generally considered a weaker point than pass catchers.

Which of these prospects who won’t be Seahawks would you rather become a Seahawk if you could flip a switch and put Seattle in position to pick between the two?

Troy Fautanu or Laiatu Latu?

Washington left tackle Troy Fautanu, thought to be up for a new position at guard when he gets to the NFL, is widely mocked to the Seahawks at pick 16. That’s as much of a “draft-for-need” pick as you’ll ever see, not because Fautanu couldn’t also be the best prospect at 16 but due to the fact that if Seattle still had Damien Lewis then we’d probably be talking about a defensive player getting mocked to the Seahawks at 16. I mean, there’s no bigger need than defense, right?

Mueller also ranks Latu as a top-10 prospect and an elite edge prospect if teams clear him for medical reasons; Latu retired due to a neck injury while he was at the University of Washington and then transferred to UCLA and returned. The Seahawks don’t have an immediate need at edge rusher with Boye Mafe, Uchenna Nwosu, Derick Hall, and Darrell Taylor, but I don’t think anyone would bat an eye at a Latu selection even though I rarely see that in mocks so it is unexpected.

Fautanu is the perceived “need” but Latu could be an equal prospect who plays on the worse side of the ball and would be a talent injection to the defense.

Jackson Powers-Johnson or Quinyon Mitchell?

The Jackson Powers-Johnson mock picks have dipped recently, as it seems like Duke’s Graham Barton has become the more popular center prospect to go in the first round lately. Will that be how it turns out? We will find out in five days.

The Seahawks don’t have a “need” at cornerback but Toledo’s Quinyon Mitchell could be the closest thing to Devon Witherspoon at the position in this draft in terms of his upside and ability to tilt the field on a defense. Seattle doesn’t have an obvious route to playing Witherspoon, Mitchell, Riq Woolen, etc. at the same time but they’d make it work somehow. Mitchell is ranked higher than Powers-Johnson on literally every public draft board, but he’s not a center.

Which would you rather see the Seahawks have with their first pick?

Trade Up or Trade Down?

In the beginning of draft season, I said the Seahawks probably would not trade down. Lately, I’ve switched to believing the Seahawks probably will trade down as new information has come out.

Being on this side of Seahawks draft articles for the past 14 years, I have picked up that most fans believe that trading down is preferable to trading up—even though Seattle’s history of trading up in the first round is immaculate and Schneider’s history of trading down is awful.

Oh well, sometimes you ignore history and try to get it right this time, especially as the Seahawks are in dire need of maybe one more pick in the top-100 if they can pull it off, if not two. Mueller noted on The Athletic GM Show this week that he believes this draft class sucks outside of the top-120 or so prospects, which is unusual. Seattle may need to find a way to get one or two more prospects in the top-100 and they currently don’t have their third pick until 102.

However, and I don’t think we should ignore this, a “good” or “great” draft class is usually defined by getting at least one GREAT player…your odds as a GM increase significantly of getting one of those players by moving up and not by moving down. So moving up for a player you have “conviction” about vs. trading down into a range where you just have a list of prospects that you’re “comfortable” with is the debate Schneider must have on Thursday.

Which will be the best course of action, not including sticking-and-picking which could probably still be the most likely outcome.

Is 4th round good enough for an OL?

The Seahawks pick 1.16, 3.81, and then 4.102, the second pick of day three. Would you accept it if the Seahawks didn’t pick a guard or center until their third pick of the draft or is it not acceptable to wait until day three?

First round QB = Ok?

This is a complicated question when you pick 16th in this draft because are you getting Michael Penix or Bo Nix or J.J. McCarthy? Nobody knows. What if the Seahawks can trade up for Drake Maye or McCarthy or someone else they really like? So I can’t tell you which QB the Seahawks would prefer in the third round—there are arguments for Penix, McCarthy, and Nix, or Maye in a trade up—but the concept is what matters here:

Drafting a QB in the first round when you don’t have a second round pick and Geno Smith, Sam Howell are on the roster for 2024? It’s going to come with some controversy if it happens because quarterback is the furthest thing from a 2024 need but it would help a lot of issues in 2025 and beyond if the player works out as hoped. However, an offensive line prospect added to the team? You probably won’t be getting that…again. Seattle’s next pick would probably even be a defensive player after that.

Let me know your thoughts in the polls and the comments and I’ll go over the results later this week so be sure to subscribe to not miss anything!