Seahawks fans finally get the 'early draft pick QB' they always wanted

Sam Darnold's path to the NFL majors and what will Seahawks do about Tariq Woolen and Devon Witherspoon?

Most NFL fans dream of the day that their favorite team drafts a quarterback in the top-5, but Seahawks fans have earned that wish more than all 31 other fanbases. In 50 years, the Seattle Seahawks gave that a try only one time and it went so poorly with Rick Mirer — only a couple of years after Dan McGwire — that the franchise hasn’t tried to make a big investment at quarterback since then.

For that reason, Sam Darnold could actually be the most talented quarterback who the Seahawks have ever employed, up there with Warren Moon and Russell Wilson, but with an even higher ceiling than either of those quarterbacks. As it was described by someone* in the Seaside Joe live game chat on Thursday: “Matt Hasselbeck with a stronger arm”.

*Sorry I forgot who, shout yourself out

The third overall pick in the 2018 draft, Darnold is the type of dream draft pick that Seahawks fans have always wanted the team to make. He just wasn’t drafted by the Seahawks. Imagine if Seattle had the third overall pick in next year’s draft (let’s just say they got lucky with a trade) and John Schneider picked a 21-year-old once-prized QB recruit out of a top college program who analysts were comparing to Andrew Luck.

That player would be called the best prospect in Seahawks draft history.

That never guarantees that the player will actually be good for that team (see: Darnold, Sam) but in aroundabout way, Seahawks fans finally got their man. Their prized quarterback draftee. It took him seven years to get to Seattle, but that’s like the norm in baseball; we could just say that the Jets are rookie ball, the Panthers are single-A, the 49ers are double-A, and the Vikings are triple-A.

Darnold finally made it to the majors.

Here were some of your post-game Sam Darnold comments after the Seahawks beat the Cardinals 23-20 on Thursday:

IdahoFred: Sam is better than I expected. I don’t know what I expected but he is turning out to be an improvement over Geno. Maybe a big improvement.

Danno: My feeling about Darnold has always been positive, and I’ve maintained since his signing that Kubiak felt he’d be better than Geno in his system. He looks like he’s still improving and we haven’t seen the best of him yet. He’s had more game winning drives since the start of 2024 than any other QB. I think he was tied with Mahomes going into this game.

zezinhom400: Yes Darnold is better than I expected. Because of so many factors

Largentium: Sam is exceeding my expectations. Especially when he’s on the move, he’s downright deadly in that situation. Hopefully he keeps it up. I think he can.

Stephen Pitell: Sam is better than Geno. Sam is better than all but a few years of Russell. Sam is steady and seemingly indestructible. He has a great arm and makes good choices more reliably than Geno. I LOVE Sam Darnold. I want to have more children so I can name them Darnold.

Don Ellis: I had to have a bit of whisky after this one to calm my nerves. Went from feeling like we had the game sewn up (I know, I know) through most the game to feeling like we were going to just hand the opponent the game on a silver platter. Darnold proved to me, however, that he is not just a simple game manager and can load the team on his shoulders and lead them to victory.

If this Sam Darnold lovefest ends up being short-lived, let’s enjoy it while it’s here. Every week, I’ll post your post-game comments the next day, so let’s do that and get to some other topics.

Here are some of your comments following the game:

Sea Hawk Run!: I’m wondering about our feelings about Riq and Spoon. I think we should watch all of their plays closely, not just the broadcast highlights, to get a full picture.

Riq is casual and relaxed. Spoon is intense. That can prime us to be angry at Riq and forgiving of Spoon. Without looking at all their plays, we risk being dumb, opinionated fans. From what I saw last year, Spoon is great when he runs forward, but not so great when he dropping and covering. He plays more like a safety than a corner. But the narrative is that he’s great. Spoon looked a bit lost in that final series. Murray was targeting him. Just before they tied it up, I said out loud that, they’re going to tie it up, and it will be on Spoon.

Riq is no tackling torpedo, but last year, he was elite at being sticky when dropping. But after seeing poor tackling, any pass he doesn’t defend really pisses us off.

Thank goodness for Jobe. He can drop and cover, and he’s an aggressive tackler too. And like any corner, he’ll get beat sometimes.

Im looking forward to Emmanwori getting on the field. But he’s likely to take some of the aggressive Spoon plays. (And make those hits even harder.) But I’m not sure that I want to see Spoon drop 1 on 1 deep more than Woolen. And don’t forget, we need depth not just starters’ snaps. Let’s hope that Riq gains intensity and confidence and that Spoon rounds out his game as the season continues.

Normally I would try to edit down a post this long but I appreciate all of your insights here. These observations help me understand better, so I think they’ll help everyone else too. To think that four games into the season we’d be saying “Thank goodness for Josh Jobe” over the other two, but it feels justifiable right now.

I would still have to say that Tariq Woolen is a much bigger liability because for the third time in his career he had three penalties in one game. For the first time, all three penalties were either PI or 15-yards (face mask). The Seahawks can account and plan for Witherspoon’s fallbacks, but you can’t account for the corner who is going to give away yards in addition to being a mediocre tackler and now somewhat of a liability in coverage.

I say “somewhat” and give the benefit of the doubt because the season is young but he’s become more of a magnet for targets this season than ever. As Bob Condotta noted, Jobe appears to have replaced him as the starter, but this had little impact on snaps because base defense = three corners.

Comparing the weaknesses of Woolen and Witherspoon, we are still left with one most likely outcome:

• Woolen could be gone by 2026 (free agent)

• Witherspoon is signed through 2027

As Seattle searches for answers on how to survive the rest of the Woolen era, Mike Macdonald still has three more seasons to solve Witherspoon (if the Seahawks pick up his fifth-year option, which they most certainly will) and so he’s the guy that makes me optimistic about the cornerback room, along with Jobe.

Witherspoon has had 2 penalties in the last 12 months of football. That’s fewer penalties than Woolen had on Thursday.

I’m definitely of the mind that if you draft a cornerback at #5, he needs to be elite and Witherspoon isn’t. (Although there have been plenty of plays he’s made where fans have thought he is and “has arrived”.) There are valid concerns about the investment made there. There are also valid concerns about almost every player who the Seahawks passed on to draft Witherspoon, including Jalen Carter.

Let’s re-watch a couple of the times that Murray targeted Harrison against Witherspoon in the fourth quarter: For example, we have Harrison over (really behind and away from) Spoon here:

That kind of back shoulder throw is usually said to be impossible to cover. Then on the touchdown throw to Harrison, Spoon had only allowed him 0.3 yards of separation, which is cited by Next Gen Stats as the second-fewest yards of seperation on any touchdown in the NFL this season:

Twitter said that Harrison “Mossed” Witherpsoon, which I mostly attribute to people being unoriginal, but this is a 6’ corner guarding a 6’3 receiver and the ball thrown by Kyler Murray was exactly where it had to be. Witherspoon’s height and size does create an issue for Seattle when he’s asked to guard an opposing team’s best (tall) receiver and Harrison decides at the end of the game to finally start being good.

By the way, Harrison’s “breakout” ends up being 10 targets, six catches, 66 yards, one touchdown, and two drops. I’d still be much more worried about a top-5 pick if I was a Cardinals fan than any of us should be about Witherspoon.

After the game, Witherspoon said “I gotta play better in those situations. I knew the routes that were coming but I just gotta be better.”

A few things can be true at the same time:

• Witherspoon could be outmatched because of his size

• Murray could be throwing to Harrison simply because he’s supposed to be Arizona’s WR1 and not because of who is guarding him

• Witherspoon did everything possible of him to stop those plays

How about some non-coverage Spoon. Here he is attacking from the top of the screen to break off of his blocker and make a run tackle:

Here he is avoiding a block from #85 Trey McBride to pressure Murray into a sack for him and Josh Jobe:

There are plenty of upsides to having Witherspoon on the defense, including the intensity that you mention, run defense, football IQ, effort, pass rushing, versatility, energy, and holding teammates accountable. There are also the downsides that you mention like dropping deep and covering certain receivers, which certainly limits his value as a cornerback. Whether or not he is going to be worthy of a second contract in Seattle is a very difficult question to answer, which luckily won’t have to be addressed for a while.

I really like you pointing out the “narrative” side of it all. We probably do give Witherspoon more slack than Woolen for some superficial reasons. However, I also think that Woolen has done enough to earn his reputation for being a liability and has gone past the point of no return for an extension.

Where do all of you stand on Witherspoon and Woolen after Week 4:

Bob Johnston: My takeaway from tonight is that my love for Riq has evolved into a man crush for Sam. Riq is in his own head and he’s making mistakes. Sam is playing about as well as a QB can.

Tim McConnell: Herbstreit and Michaels calling him Na-wu-so was a tad annoying. And Woolen had another really bad game.

And for getting two sacks, get it right. Mr. “Lunches in Bunches” does it again: Uchenna Nwosu has had a Seahawks game with 2 sacks on 5 separate occasions and a game with 1 sack on only 4 occasions. I don’t know what you call that but when he’s hot he’s hot and when he’s not he’s still decent.

Nwosu got 2 sacks before Derick Hall or Boye Mafe got 1 sack. He didn’t even pass a physical and return to practice until a month ago.

Jerod: Coby was down before he fumbled. The holding call on JSN was bs. And I’m ready for Riq to be sent to the “ready squad” or traded to Uncle Pete in Vegas for a 6th rounder.

The Coby Bryant fumble thing exposes the biggest flaw with replay, which is that even when we know the call is wrong they still don’t overturn it because of “video evidence”. All the video evidence does in those cases is confirm that the NFL is knowingly standing with their wrong on-field decision because they didn’t get 100% confirmation that they were wrong.

Either Bryant was “giving himself up” or what I saw was the Cardinals tapping him “down” on the shoulder an instant before the ball was jarred loose.

But essentially if the call on the field was that it wasn’t a fumble, they would have upheld that. This is Schroedinger’s Replay: They’re just accepting the call on the field without care if it’s right or wrong. It’s not a question of right or wrong, it’s a question of “confirmation” or “no confirmation” and that shouldn’t be the spirit of replay/challenges.

I don’t even care that it was a wrong call about a Seahawks player. Yeah that’s obviously more annoying but I don’t complain about the officiating. This is just a huge flaw in the whole idea of replay and the fact that in 2025 we still don’t have enough technology on the field to confirm things we’re all pretty sure happened.

Nicholas Donsky: After tonight I have to question how long we can keep Bradford and Woolen. We can’t run between the tackles on the right side of the line unless Bradford accidentally falls down and manages to slow a defender down for a few seconds and Woolen seems lost in coverage. I think the Hawks will be looking for replacements if they don’t improve soon. Thankfully, I don’t believe MM and OC K have a lot of patience for lousy play.

We had a family friend who was an NFL scout and he always said that teams make changes when they realize that almost any replacement couldn’t be worse than the starter. He was right.

Paul G: Mike Dugar reports that Bradford is playing with a bad back. The inference is that the offensive coaches find that preferable to the alternative.

Should the Seahawks start Olu Oluwatimi at center and slide Jalen Sundell to right guard? Or when Josh Jones is healthy, put him at right guard? Try Bryce Cabeldue? Seek a trade? Remember Christian Haynes?!? What should the Seahawks do next at right guard?

Seaside Joe 2398