70% of Seahawks fans say that Pete Carroll has made the exact right approach at QB

Seaside Joe 1224: Plus feelings on Abe Lucas, Jordyn Brooks, 2023 draft needs and a contest to win a free thing!

Seaside Joe posted the first part of the Seahawks Fan Survey Results (Rookie Edition) on Monday, with almost 80-percent of Seattle fans saying that they would not trade Ken Walker III for a probable late 2023 first round pick. Fans also expect Walker to get the most snaps of any rookie other than Charles Cross (41%, followed by a tie at 23% between Coby Bryant, Abe Lucas) and said that they were most happy with the Cross pick (59%), followed by Walker (28%).

I ask questions like the first one about trading Walker not as an implication, but as a simple check-in with Seahawks fans now that the internet has had several months of side discussions on the value of running backs in the draft.

I ask questions like the second one, similar to some of the answers I’ll unveil today, not because I expect fans to predict the future. This is me gauging the community’s expectations and then sharing it with you so that we can look back at these surveys later on and see how alike and different these results lined up with reality. You only need to be a person to be qualified to answer.

I asked the “happy” question because I figured a lot of Seahawks fans are happy with the Walker pick, and Seattle’s other selections, and I wanted to make that clear.

Many of the votes were from people who have been reading Seaside Joe over the last few months and that means that those voters have had a closer look at Kenneth Walker III than you’ve been able to get from any other Seahawks writer, website, or newsletter on the planet. I assumed this would sway some voters, and I’m OK with that because all I’ve done is show you how great Walker has been over the last three years, and I don’t see anything wrong with being influenced to like a player by how the player plays.

Lance Zierlein @LanceZierlein

Kenneth Walker - The Gentleman’s Handshake

But we also got a ton of votes from people who saw the survey thanks to support from retweets by Field Gulls and Jacson Bevens, so there actually is some variance in the voters and not everyone who participated has seen the Ken Walker series at Seaside Joe.

For those of you who are new to Seaside Joe and may have come over here from Field Gulls, or for those of you who are already daily readers but can’t afford the $5/month subscription for premium Regular Joes content, I will choose two comments on today’s article at random to gift free premium subscriptions for the 2022 Seahawks season. That means you’ll have access to bonus content, like Monday’s article on why Jimmy Garoppolo does actually make sense for Seattle right now, and MUCH MORE TO COME.

This season, every game day I will be posting a pre-game Seaside Joe newsletter that will be our normal daily FREE edition (1,224 days in a row of a free Seahawks newsletter as of today), but I will also be writing a post-game article and holding a community discussion after every game that is only for premium subscribers. So keep that in mind if you are not yet a Seaside Subscriber and get in on the post-game decompression every week this season.

But comment ANYTHING on today’s article and I will choose two of you at random to gift a subscription to for this season. If the name I choose at random is already a premium subscriber, I will move onto the next random comment. There will be a lot to discuss in the rest of today’s survey results, so don’t worry about having to think of something to say. You can say anything!

Don’t be shy.

Question: Have the Seahawks made the right approach at quarterback since the Russell Wilson trade?

Why ask this question:

Again, I wanted to gauge whether or not Seahawks fans are generally OK with Pete Carroll’s 2010 to 2012-like approach to the quarterback position once again. There has been a lot of guffawing by the media or loud voices online every time Seattle makes it clear that Geno Smith and Drew Lock are the only two options for 2022.

What was your reaction to this question? This could be your chance to let me know in the comments:

I keep going back to Bill Barnwell’s terribly misguided article that ranked the Seahawks as having the worst offseason of the year, which you can read about here. This is not because I’m offended because a writer at the Disneyland Corporation’s Sports Division “said mean things about the Seahawks.” I do not care about that, I promise you I’ve said far worse!

It’s simply the wrong way to look at Seattle’s offseason, especially if you consider yourself be analytically savvy.

It should have been obvious to Barnwell and anyone else who covers the NFL for a living over the last decade that we’ve been barreling towards these moments where some franchises would ultimately decide that they would rather take their chances with a rookie contract quarterback over an established veteran franchise quarterback because about half of all Super Bowl quarterbacks over the last decade have come at a significant discount.

Matt Ryan, Baker Mayfield, Deshaun Watson, these all would have been stupid decisions in the wake of trading Russell Wilson. Drafting a quarterback this year? Potentially even worse and anyone who does follow the draft any earlier than March could have told him that.

That’s my opinion. What was your opinion?

2/3rds of Seahawks fans say that the team has made the exact right approach at quarterback this offseason

With over 300 Seahawks fans voting, 67% said that Pete Carroll has made the exact right approach by waiting until 2023 to do anything drastic. Another 28% answered that the approach is pretty much correct, but they would either have a different vet than Geno or a different young option than Lock.

Only 13 of 305 fans said that Seattle “should have fixed the leak already.”

Question: If coaches feel that Abe Lucas is not as good as Jake Curhan or Stone Forsythe this year, should they start him anyway and sacrifice present quality to gain more experience?

Why ask this question:

The explanation is simple. There’s a chance that Abraham Lucas, the team’s third round pick and another offensive tackle out of an air raid offense, is not the Seahawks best right tackle as of 2022. Jake Curhan, an undrafted free agent in 2021, did not play too poorly during his five-start stint as a rookie.

We know little of Forsythe, but he has a one-year headstart on Lucas, a tackle who will have a lot to learn after playing in an offense that rarely ran the ball during his college career in the air raid. And if there’s something that Seattle hopes to do right on offense this season, with a weakness at quarterback and a viable two-headed threat at running back, it’s to be able to gain rushing yards against their opponents.

But is there any better way for Lucas to learn than on the job? If the team feels that Lucas has a much higher ceiling for 2023 and beyond than Curhan or Forsythe, which seems accurate based on his exceptional athleticism, then is better for him to have starts under his belt when the team adds a franchise quarterback next year?

70% of Seahawks fans say the team should start the best five offensive linemen

Most of you said that if Curhan or Forsythe is the better right tackle this season, then that’s who should be starting. And that’s a fair answer because as far as we know right now, either of Curhan or Forsythe could be long-term starting right tackles in the NFL, if not have brighter futures than Lucas.

We just don’t know right now. But for the 30% who voted to go with Lucas, I understand that sentiment too. Abraham Lucas seemed like a great value in the third round and it’s even more comforting that the Seahawks won’t need to rely on him at left tackle because they picked Cross.

What was the reason for your vote? Let me know and you might become a Regular Joe!

Question: Besides QB, what is the Seahawks biggest need in the 2023 NFL Draft?

Why ask this question:

It’s pretty straightforward. I made my argument for wide receiver last week and that is something that the fans do not agree with. So for anyone who says that Seaside Joe has heavily influenced these results, this poll does not support you.

Over 40% of Seahawks fans say that Center is the team’s biggest need in the 2023 draft (not counting QB)

I could see this being true and my argument for drafting a wide receiver in the first round being true at the same time. They aren’t mutually exclusive. As long as the Seahawks draft a center at any point, that’s theoretically “filling a need.”

I like a good center as much as most people do. But for Seattle to move the needle in the playoffs next season and beyond, certainly we hope to see a lot more production at edge rusher, better coverage skills at linebacker, quality play from the offensive line, and depth at wide receiver that does not currently exist—in addition to a QB upgrade.

Center is fairly low on the priorities list for any team, but do the Seahawks want to find the next Creed Humphrey in the 2023 draft? That would be ideal and could be done somewhere on day two.

The needs here very clearly went: Center (41%), Edge (26%), NT/DE (14%), and CB (11%).

Question: Which 2020 draft pick will have the best 2022 season?

As I said before, no need to predict the future here. Just trying to gauge fan expectations and after Darrell Taylor led voting for a long time, Jordyn Brooks fans stormed in to give him the win: 53% to 44%.

Question: Which 2021 draft pick will have the best 2022 season?

Not as much of a competition here, as Seahawks fans expect Tre Brown to have the best 2022 season out of the three players who were drafted in 2021: 61% for Brown compared to 38% for Dee Eskridge. The best part about these two polls is that I see reason for optimism with Seattle’s last two drafts: Brooks, Taylor, Eskridge, Brown, Damien Lewis, Colby Parkinson is a good starting point to maybe find three or four key starters on a playoff contending team. How they do will help determine what the Seahawks’ draft needs in 2023 will actually turn out to be.

I’ll choose two comments at random for a free premium subscription to Seaside Joe. If you want to bypass randomness and become a Regular Joe for this season’s bonus discussions after every game, then come on in!