Seaside Streams: Seahawks 4th round picks

Tyrice Knight and A.J. Barner get the Seahawks YouTube treatment: Seaside Joe 1890

With their two fourth round picks, the Seattle Seahawks selected a linebacker who had no stars or attention coming out of high school, and a tight end who used to be a linebacker who used to be a quarterback. Neither was heavily recruited either the first time they went to college or when they entered the transfer portal, but both are NFL players on the Seahawks with really really good odds of making the final 53-man roster.

This is a Seaside Streams episode dedicated to Tyrice Knight and A.J. Barner.

4.118 - LB Tyrice Knight, UTEP

I picked not a great stat, but a stat nonetheless, to find day three linebackers who had at least 100 tackles in 2023. There were actually 12 results, but surprisingly only one of those names was drafted in the fourth round. The others were drafted in the fifth, sixth, and two in the seventh.

4th (Josey Jewell), 5th (Ja’Whaun Bentley, Blake Cashman, Damone Clark, Dre Greenlaw, Micah McFadden, E.J. Speed), 6th (David Long, Foyesade Oluokun, Elandon Roberts), and 7th (Kaden Elliss, Zaire Franklin). Speed and Franklin both play for the Colts and even co-host a podcast together called The Trenches.

Even if he doesn’t start a podcast, Tyrice Knight would be a fourth round steal if he can at least grab a starting role in Mike Macdonald’s defense within the next two years. Knight led the nation in tackles at UTEP in 2023 and I love when I hear numbers like that from the locals who love the player like in this news recap of his combine performance:

The YouTube Channel JWAC Gridiron calls Knight “a terrific run defender” who doesn’t get enough love because he played outside of a power 5 program.

If you want to believe that anyone who joins the Seahawks is the best player of all-time, I still recommend Top Billin’ and he’s not even a Seahawks fan so I’m not sure why he keeps getting more invested in hyping everybody on the team except for the fact that it makes his videos more popular.

I like embedding clips so you can see the thumbnail, but unfortunaetly the Seahawks and the NFL, they don’t let people do that. So here’s a link to Knight talking to the press after his first practice with Seattle on Friday.

Here are just some raw highlights:

And a full game’s worth of plays:

And if you want to go way back, here are some highlights from high school:

Here is his first press conference call after being drafted by the Seahawks:

Tyrice Knight didn’t get any recruiting interest out of high school in 2018, so he started at Independence Community College in Kansas and even after some time there his best transfer offer was UTEP at the last minute. The pandemic gave Knight additional time in college to develop as a linebacker, eventually getting to 140 tackles, 15.5 TFL, 4.5 sacks, 7 batted passes over 12 games in his senior season. If Macdonald can limit his exposure in coverage, Knight is expected to be ready to take on NFL rushing offenses which might get him an advanced route to a starting role on the Seahawks.

However, limitations in pass coverage from Seattle’s linebackers has been a major issue on the defense for years. So this selection maybe has more to do with the impact that the new coaching staff will have on the Seahawks than it does with Knight himself because if he had been picked by Pete Carroll then perhaps we’d still get more of the same. This is up to Macdonald to turn Knight into only the second fourth round linebacker in the league right now who could be able to get 100+ tackles. Which isn’t the best stat, but it is somewhere to start.

4.121 - TE A.J. Barner, Michigan

Very easy to understand passing concepts videos like this one (which are the types of videos I need: simple) emphasize how important it is to have athletic tight ends able to pull and execute difficult blocks around the ends against linebackers and in some cases safeties who might be bigger than them.

Hence, Seattle’s additions of A.J. Barner and Pharoah Brown as the replacements for Will Dissly and Colby Parkinson are primarily efforts to support Geno Smith, Kenneth Walker, Zach Charbonnet, and the other pass catchers more so than looking to find the next Travis Kelce. That’s not at all what A.J. Barner is meant to do but that doesn’t mean he can’t have a really high ceiling for what he’ll be asked to execute in the NFL.

Just seven tight ends who were drafted on day three started at least 14 games last season, including Will Dissly (of the seven, two went to UW, can you name the other one?), and Parkinson played even more snaps than Dissly did. So the Seahawks have been great at finding tight end value on day three under John Schneider and Pete Carroll. As long as Carroll wasn’t the only one picking the tight ends, Barner has good history on his side with Seattle.

Unlike the linebackers, six of the seven were drafted in the fourth round and only one (George Kittle) was picked in the fifth. No sixth or seventh round tight ends started 14 games last season. If I lower the number to 10 starts, then we do get a sixth rounder in Darren Waller, although he’s more of a receiver than a tight end. Generally speaking if your intention is to find the next George Kittle, good luck: There are not many tight ends like him who make it past day two. Or really not many like Kittle period, but those who could become good receivers are usually picked in the second and third round.

At least Barner isn’t meant to be a tight end like that, but it doesn’t mean he has no upside as a receiver.

Ryder McConville calls Barner a “quality run blocker” with “upside as a passing game guy”:

This video has some great highlights of Barner as a blocker included:

For some reason this video was allowed to be embedded, probably because it’s from the Seahawks Press Pass channel instead of the main one:

Here is Barner’s first call with the Seahawks media:

Knight and Barner were both at the Senior Bowl, a popular spot for Schneider to scout prospects he’s eventually going to draft:

Barner was the “Division III DEFENSIVE Player of the Year” in high school but was mainly recruited as a tight end and eventually chose Indiana after a late push by some of the bigger schools who wanted to have him. Here he is playing at Indiana against Cincinnati:

Barner transferred to Michigan for the 2023 season, proving he’s good at picking eventual champions assuming that the Seahawks follow suit next. Dane Brugler actually mentioned some weaknesses in Barner’s game as a blocker “as a blocker, he lacks desired mass and sustain strength, but he creates a surge at the point of attack and shows the balance to be an effective backside puller” and implies that for him to be a steal he may need to tap into whatever he has in the tank as a receiver.

That doesn’t feel too dissimilar from the player the Seahawks lost to the Rams in free agency, Colby Parkinson. If a team is able to maneuver a transition from one player who gets paid $7 million per season to a rookie who will barely make $700,000 per season, then that’s EXACTLY what fans should want from the franchise because we can’t expect Seattle to be loyal to every single player who has a positive impact on the team. Parkinson is appreciated, but the Seahawks would be lucky to have a replacement who can do everything he can do…then repeat the process in four years.

There’s a narrative out there that teams shouldn’t draft tight ends in the first round because you can always find Kittle in the fifth, but he’s a massive exception. The best tight ends of the past decade, like Rob Gronkowski (2nd), Kelce (3rd), Mark Andrews (3rd), T.J. Hockenson (1st), and a recent success like Sam LaPorta (2nd) were all picked somewhere in the top-100, if not top-60.

A.J. Barner doesn’t need to replace Noah Fant or even Dissly. If he can be as good as Pharoah Brown with a ceiling of Parkinson, that in itself would be a win.