Seahawks Fan Survey: Olu Oluwatimi already winning over Seattle

What YOU said about the 2023 draft and season expectations: Seaside Joe 1527

On Thursday, I opened up another set of poll questions for Seattle Seahawks fans, this time focusing on your feelings about the 2023 draft class. As I always say with polls, there is no “right” or “wrong” answer and you can never been “too uninformed” to answer. You are a fan, therefore, you are an expert on the opinion of fans!

For today’s 1,527th straight day of the Seaside Joe newsletter, I will post your answers to the those five questions. I want to make this quick because I hope to get out another bonus Joe later today because my hunger for making a Seahawks newsletter number one on the Substack platform is insatiable.

Want to help us move up the charts? Join the Regular Joes club today—we are ad and sponsor-free, as will always be the case!—or if you haven’t already, add your email to become a free subscriber. We are just a few short of hitting 2,100. That’s almost 2,000 more than we had a year ago.

Now onto YOUR answers!

Seahawks fans “most-excited” for Witherspoon, but that’s not a slight to JSN

Jaxon Smith-Njigba is the third-highest drafted wide receiver in Seattle Seahawks history. Going 20th overall at that position is never going to be overlooked and he’s one of only three first round picks that Seattle has ever used on a receiver: Joey Galloway at 8th in 1995, Koren Robinson at 9th in 2001, and now JSN.

You have to go all the way down to Paul Richardson at 45th in 2014 to find the next Seahawks receiver on the board.

But it’s not about when you are drafted, it’s about what you do when you get to the league; D’Wayne Eskridge was picked higher than DK Metcalf and Tyler Lockett. Even Dareke Young (233rd overall) is probably higher on the depth chart than Eskridge. Though he didn’t “win” this poll, I know that Seahawks fans are elated to have Smith-Njigba added to the offense and as I wrote recently, my number one goal if I’m running an NFL team is being able to put up points. Like 35 points, consistently, at will, against playoff teams.

Short of adding Patrick Mahomes, most teams know that they have to surround the quarterback who they do employ with as many weapons as possible: Jalen Hurts, Joe Burrow, Lamar Jackson, Geno Smith, etc. If you can’t have the best thrower of the football—which is nothing to be ashamed of, sports often have one or two elite players for years running, think of Tiger Woods or Wayne Gretzky or Michael Jordan or Novak Djokovic—then have the best possible players at the points of attack.

Up Next: The Seahawks 2024 salary cap situation, how to save money and where to spend it!

If the Seahawks didn’t have the Broncos first round pick and they opened this class with Jaxon Smith-Njigba, he’d be one of the most popular rookies in team history. And he’ll still be that. But Seattle did use Denver’s top-five selection for themselves and I think because Seaside Joe hyped up and predicted Devon Witherspoon as the choice, it certainly must have helped influence the poll results a little bit.

Half-Kam, Half-Sherm, Half-Gary Payton and not just one of the highest-drafted players at his position in team history, but Witherspoon joined an exclusive list of cornerbacks picked in the top-five. I won’t list them all here, but Witherspoon joins Deion Sanders, Jalen Ramsey, Patrick Peterson, Mike Haynes, and a few others as cornerbacks picked fifth overall.

Not only that, he’s playing for arguably the greatest cornerbacks coach in football history. Pete Carroll.

The Seahawks could have candidates for Offensive and Defensive Rookie of the Year for the second time in as many seasons.

Seaside Joe readers don’t disparage our hardworking athletes and human beings at the running back position

For as long as Seaside Joe has existed, this place has maintained a duty to say, “Okay, I know it’s very trendy and in style to get all pissy when a team spends money or draft capital on a running back, but let’s keep an optimistic and rational outlook while we’re here.” After all, when the Seahawks play on primetime, the broadcast is far more likely to highlight and promote Ken Walker III than they are Charles Cross or Boye Mafe.

This isn’t always a question of these relatively abstract concepts of football value, but sometimes we have to remind ourselves of the importance of entertainment value.

“So what, you’re saying that a team should sacrifice 1-2% of their chance to win a game because they want to put another element on the field that people want to watch?”

No. What I’m saying is what you just alluded to: People want to watch.

I don’t make the rules of the universe, I only pay attention to them. Derrick Henry is one of the biggest stars in the NFL. If you want to split hairs over how “valuable” Henry is, by all means keep sharing the same studies you created six years ago without doing any updates, but this part is irrefutable: NBC, CBS, FOX, ESPN, NFL Network, Amazon Prime, and YouTube* do not excited about putting the Titans on TV because of Ryan Tannehill and Nick Westbrook-Ikhine. They just don’t.

*dear lord that is too many football networks to juggle now

They put Derrick Henry’s face on the poster and say, “Come watch Derrick Henry!” and they wouldn’t do that unless fans wanted to sit down to watch Derrick Henry. That’s not something that can be disputed.

Now that’s kind of a tangent and a separate note to the fact that Seattle had a significant need to fill at running back because Rashaad Penny and Travis Homer left in free agency, DeeJay Dallas is no better than an RB3, and the Seahawks are virtually guaranteed to be dipping into the depth chart at some point this season, if not for long stretches. Walker is entertaining—this, we know, and that’s why I said it was foolish for Seahawks writers and social media accounts to be bashing the Seahawks for picking Walker because he was destined to be a fan favorite—but he is also valuable. He’ll be more valuable if he doesn’t have to cross over 250 carries this year and if he splits duties with a back who is capable of starting, and no option was better after the first round than UCLA’s Zach Charbonnet.

I think we could see Charbonnet start in Week 1. He may be the perfect fit for Seattle’s needs in the first quarter and on first/second down, although catching passes out of the backfield is going to be one of his specialties. Walker caught 27 passes as a rookie but remains a work-in-progress both at catching the ball and pass blocking; Charbonnet also lacks experience in pass protection.

But to start Charbonnet and then to suddenly inject a back with 4.38 speed and hypnotic burst at the point of contact like Walker, that could really throw off defenses in the second half of games. To have both backs fresh for a potential playoff appearance, that’s not something many teams can boast and it’s certainly something that will help make Geno better at his job too.

Like JSN, this is nothing against Derick Hall, who the team hopes develops into one of the top pass rushers in the NFL. But we’re likely to see Charbonnet contribute much sooner and that’s also going to influence the exciement of the pick.

Fans love offensive line picks—Anthony Bradford, Olu Oluwatimi

For as long as I’ve been writing about the Seahawks—officially dating back to 2011 and I argue that I’ve written more articles about the Pete Carroll Seahawks than any other human on the planet—this much has been true: Fans love (or hate) offensive linemen and offensive line coaches (maybe just one in particular for Seattle) more than any other position.

It’s interesting because offensive line remains the most mysterious of all the positions. They don’t have traditional stats. We are largely basing our opinions off of things like draft status, awards, Pro Bowls, and reputation, not on the eye test. It’s difficult to watch a football game and to keep your focus on the play of the offensive line, less you risk losing sight of the football, which of course they will never (or should never) handle.

Maybe then that’s why when things go wrong, blame the play of the offensive line. It’s not wholly unfair either; if your team is getting their asses kicked in the trenches, it’s likely the cause of your frustration. Nothing is more frustrating than an offense that can’t move the football down the field and score points and it’s very hard to be terrible at that in the NFL if you have an elite offensive line. We can point to examples like Mike Shanahan’s Broncos being able to stick any running back behind center for a 1,500-yard season or Kyle Shanahan’s 49ers and the rotation at quarterback.

So even though fans aren’t necessarily paying attention to the offensive line like they are watching Derrick Henry or Ken Walker III (which again, is what makes special players: their ability to produce in spite of their offensive line a la Marshawn Lynch), fans are ALWAYS paying attention to the offensive line. Just maybe not always in the moment.

It’s more like when you’re 15 minutes away from home and the thought creeps in, “Did I turn off the coffee machine?”

Either you have peace of mind or…you have Tom Cable.

With that, fans are usually elated when their favorite teams uses draft capital on offensive linemen because it means that maybe they’ll have more peace of mind in the future when it comes to the pass protection and run blocking. More of that=More production from your passing and rushing offense. Though there’s little evidence to support the theory that a guard or a center is drastically more valuable than a running back (something that analytics has avoided arguing because they’re too obsessed with only assessing the value of one position in a vacuum), Seahawks fans were most happy to see the team add guard Anthony Bradford and center Olu Oluwatimi on day three.

And I believe that fans of any team would usually lean in that direction. Most fans would give anything to have a top-five offensive line starting AND five players behind them who are just as capable of starting and playing at a high level.

Could Oluwatimi start in 2023? Absolutely. Maybe that’s not the plan and maybe that’s not even the desired outcome, but what’s most important is that Seattle now has depth at the position. That’s not likely what they had in Joey Hunt and it certainly wasn’t the case in 2022 with Kyle Fuller.

Who do you think starts first: Bradford or Oluwatimi?

Seahawks fans have raised Super Bowl expectations

Finally, about half of you do think that Seattle’s Super Bowl hopes went up after the draft and that’s how I feel too. Not only because of the Seahawks roster but also just relative to other NFC rosters. I can’t point to four teams in the conference who are definitely better than Seattle and anything less than second place in the NFC West and 10 wins would qualify as disappointing. That’s just the lowest bar, but it’s certainly not the ceiling.

An improved defense and a few upgrades on offense, I think the Seahawks should be able to go from a lucky 9-8 to a legit 11-6 or better. What I really want to see though is not simply a better record, but actually playing like a contending team against Super Bowl contenders, as that’s not what we’ve consistently seen from Seattle is at least six years. There is no more room for “Maybe the year after next season”—I think back on the 2021 Bengals and that team wasn’t supposed to reach the Super Bowl so soon and Cincinnati got through a much tougher gauntlet in the AFC to get there.

The last two offseasons were a great opportunity for the Seahawks to get better. Now is the time for the Seahawks to be better.

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Up Next: The Seahawks 2024 salary cap situation, how to save money and where to spend it!