Should Seahawks have taken Rams trade offer?

How much were Rams willing to overpay for Byron Murphy? Seaside Joe 1894

The Seahawks reportedly turned down trade offers from the Rams and Eagles for the 16th pick, signaling that my initial belief that Seattle would hold tight because of the drop-off in talent around that pick was actually accurate…but my continuous follow-ups that no, the Seahawks probably will trade down were mostly wrong, although I did name Byron Murphy II in my final prediction as a player Seattle might stick-and-pick if available.

I didn’t expect Murphy to make it to 16 and neither did John Schneider, which gave the GM two things he wanted: A prospect who could be a dominant interior presence that the Seahawks have been lacking for years AND an opportunity to trade the pick for a premium price because of the defensive players who fell out of the top-15.

Unfortunately, Schneider couldn’t have both and ultimately he chose Murphy over the additional draft capital. Knowing what we now know about L.A.’s massive overpay to trade up for defensive tackle Braden Fiske on Day 2, it’s anyone’s guess what Rams general manager Les Snead was willing to overpay for Murphy.

Should the Seahawks have given the Rams what they wanted at the cost of getting back more than what Seattle felt Murphy was worth?

Obviously at this point the only right answer is, “No, the Seahawks made the right decision to draft Byron Murphy”. Why is it the RIGHT answer? Because Seattle did draft Murphy, so there’s no point in arguing for an alternate timeline that would result in the Seahawks not only losing a player, but losing legitimately one of the most valuable players on the entire roster right now.

Even before Murphy has ever played in an NFL game he’s already a hot commodity on the Seahawks roster. Still, I wonder, what could the Rams have been offering to convince a division rival to let them get the player that Seattle wanted?

What the Rams did

Having lost Aaron Donald to retirement a month or so before the draft, the Rams obviously had a major hole on their defense to fill. But it wasn’t just Donald’s position, it was the fact that Donald was holding up the entire defensive line and front-seven. Without AD, L.A.’s front seven looks like the worst in the NFL.

Kobie Turner had a promising rookie season as a third round pick, but to what degree does he have Donald to thank for that in the same way that countless former AD teammates can attest to? We will find out in a few months.

I’ve mentioned this many times in the past, but Aaron Donald—I don’t want to use an over-used term like “single-handedly” that is obviously inaccurate—is probably owed a debt of gratitude by every non-Seattle team in the NFL for what he did to the Seahawks. Pete Carroll could never consistently beat or score against the Rams after they drafted AD, and it only got worse after L.A. hired Sean McVay, so those two may have been the most responsible for the Seahawks never having a dynasty or winning a second Super Bowl.

Count all the important regular season games they lost to the Rams. Count the close division title losses to the 49ers or Rams by one or two games in the NFC West. Count the literal playoff loss to the Rams in 2020.

Trading up for Byron Murphy is never going to offset the loss of one of 20 greatest players of all-time, but how much would Snead have overpaid to try?

Well, on day two, Snead traded picks 52, 155, and a 2025 second round pick to the Panthers to move up to pick 39 for Florida State defensive end Braden Fiske, who may or may not have been their DT2 after Murphy. The decision to trade a future second round pick to move up 13 spots in the SECOND round was cited by many as the biggest overpay in a draft trade in the past decade.

We know how little the Rams think of future draft picks, so what might have L.A. offered to go from 19 to 16?

I assume that the Rams wouldn’t have given up next year’s first round pick for that, but that’s probably the price where even Seahawks fans would wonder, “Is Byron Murphy better than two first round picks?”

I also assume that the Rams would have traded next year’s second round pick, but Snead has since said that L.A. always planned to move up for Fiske in the second round if he was there. If the Rams were always going to trade up for Fiske, then does it make sense that L.A. would have been able to part with a second round pick to move up for Murphy at pick 16?

If Snead is telling the truth about Fiske, who was reunited with former Florida State front-seven teammate Jared Verse, the player the Rams pick at 19, then maybe the Rams offered the Seahawks picks 19, 83, and 99 for pick 16. That’s two third round picks to go down three spots in the first round…

But this has nothing to do with picks. This has to do with players and clearly the Seahawks (and the Rams for that matter) see Byron Murphy II as a player who doesn’t become available as a 21-year-old prospect on a rookie contract very often. Every prospect has a price that a team might be willing to accept to give him up, but two third round picks was certainly not enough of an overpay for John Schneider and Mike Macdonald to lose the player they were dreaming would fall to them at pick 16 all along.

What did the Eagles do?

If the Seahawks HAD traded down to 19, there’s no reason to think that they would have stopped there once they relinquished the rights to Murphy. But supposedly the Eagles also wanted pick 16, except they wanted Quinyon Mitchell. As it turns out, Mitchell fell to Philadelphia at 22 and they didn’t need to do anything to get him.

Coincidentally or maybe not, the Eagles also had an aggressive day two move, trading up from 50 to 40 to draft Cooper DeJean and giving up picks 53 and 161 for picks 78 and 152.

Both the Rams and Eagles had a lot of later picks and clearly a willingness to move them, but maybe after seeing what Aaron Donald did to them for the past 10 years, the Seahawks were not willing to accept anything less than “too much”.