My radical trade idea to help Seahawks get franchise QB
Seahawks must think ahead -- far ahead -- to get their franchise QB
Ever since the Seahawks traded Russell Wilson on March 8, 2022, most of the NFL media, the Seahawks content creators, and fans have annually speculated around this time of year, “Which quarterback will the Seahawks draft?”
I haven’t and I expect 2025 to be no different.
This is for no other reason than supply and demand:
The 2022 and 2024 draft classes offered no supplies (at least not where the Seahawks were drafting)
Despite picking 5th overall in 2023, that still appeared to be too late to get any of the top-3 options
The pattern keeps repeating itself and 2025 has had a strong consensus opinion from experts that this class is terrible.
"It's reminiscent of the year Travon Walker and Aidan Hutchinson went No. 1 and No. 2," Renner said. "I think it's a little better than that year's class, and there are a couple quarterbacks that will make it interesting at the top, whereas that year didn't have the QBs. But it's much closer to that level of talent than we've seen the last two years."
But quarterback prospects drive clicks and views more than every other position combined, which is why most 2022 mock drafts had players like Malik Willis, Desmond Ridder, Matt Corral, and Kenny Pickett going in the first round, and often the top-10. Pickett went 20th, no other QB went in the top-70.
Make a mental note to yourself NOW before the lies start later this month:
Analysts have been in agreement for at least a year that the 2025 quarterbacks could produce as few as zero future starters. It is only after the Senior Bowl, the Combine, and having to think of new ways to write the same story everyday that content creators realize, “Damn, I’ll get more views if I just talk about Cam Ward, Shedeur Sanders, Jalen Milroe, and Jaxson Dart, even if they are only exciting because they have these two letters next to their names: QB”.
Some very good writers have taken up countless hours of your time since 2022 writing about Willis, Ridder, Anthony Richardson, Michael Penix, etc., but Seaside Joe hasn’t seen anything to get excited about relative to Seattle’s draft position and the players available; back then I compared the 2022 class to the 2013 edition (coincidentally the year that Geno Smith went in the second round despite many mocks having him in the top-10 or sometimes first overall) and I basically stopped writing about draft quarterbacks.
SJ won’t have much QB draft coverage in 2025 either
I’m not a draft analyst, I don’t know really anything about scouting. But there are a few analysts I know I can trust and it wasn’t hard for them to see that Willis and Ridder had third round grades in 2022. It’s only when the ESPNionic noise hits in February that all of a sudden everyone starts getting confused because Willis threw a pass at a pro day and “ooh”/”aah”.
This isn’t to say that the Seahawks shouldn’t draft a quarterback or shouldn’t have drafted a quarterback recently, because I’ve been vocal about my frustrations with John Schneider essentially never doing the thing that most of us thought he was hired to do, which is unearth a franchise quarterback from the draft.
But even worse than not drafting a quarterback is doing what the Steelers did with Pickett, which is WASTE a first rounder on a mediocre prospect because everyone said you were overdue.
The Seahawks most definitely ARE overdue to draft a quarterback, but they’re picking 18th in a class that sucks and there’s nothing that anyone do to change that. This is already leading others to wonder which third or fifth round pick is going to be the next Wilson, rather than expecting the FAR (like 50x) more likely outcome if that’s what Schneider does…
I am overly confident that noise like “go get Dillon Gabriel in the 5th” is a worse plan to develop a franchise QB than keeping Sam Howell and continuing to work on him instead. Which is NOT the same thing as saying, “Sam Howell is going to be a good quarterback”.
He probably won’t be. Most college QBs won’t get close to the NFL, and most of those who do won’t become long-term starters.
BUT ALL HOPE IS NOT LOST
By all means, if you’re looking for tons of 2025 draft QB content I guarantee that most other Seahawks writers, podcasters, and Twitter accounts will give it to you non-stop, but I probably won’t and that’s worked out well for me in projecting Seattle’s draft decisions lately. And giving you content that you could get somewhere else is the complete opposite of Seaside Joe’s objective.
So instead I give you this, an idea that I bet you haven’t read anywhere else…
My radical plan to help the Seahawks find a franchise quarterback and even if Schneider doesn’t make these trades, I’m confident at least one other GM is already thinking this way and will set his team up for the best chance of success in an era when so many are failing to do so: