Texans: Want to trade with Seahawks?

Would Seahawks make historic move for QB? Shore Things 4/17/2023

It’s been almost a month since I wrote that “If the Seahawks want to trade up for a QB, I won’t tear up old pics of us together” and speculated that maybe Seattle was scouting Bryce Young and C.J. Stroud because they have reason to believe that the Houston Texans were going to be open to trading down. At the time—and mostly still to this day—99% of the media was deadlocking the Texans with a quarterback selection because “they have to do it”.

(Nevermind that these are the same people who say that Zach Wilson and Trey Lance’s careers are over after two years in the league.)

As of Monday morning, Houston general manager Nick Caserio is letting it be known to the world at large: “We’re open to listening” for trade offers if a team wants the second overall pick bad enough.

Look down the list of teams who the Texans could trade with:

• Arizona Cardinals: They want to trade down, not up

• Indianapolis Colts: Same division

• Seattle Seahawks: “John, we open for business???”

The Seahawks should be the first team on Houston’s list, so it is only a matter of how badly Pete Carroll and John Schneider want to get QB2 out of this draft class. As sure as it is that Jeff Bezos will be the next owner of the Seahawks if he wants to be, Seattle will hold the number two pick in the draft if they want it bad enough.

I can remember being a teenager and calling 950ESPN to ask if the Seahawks could trade up for Michael Vick and I still feel very stupid for that question. But this situation is not like that situation and I’m barely a teenager anymore.

This is literally John Schneider looking at Pete Carroll and saying, “Are we really gonna do this?” Because the Seahawks hold all the cards to “do this” if that’s what they want out of this draft: The number two QB. This would be taking the Russell Wilson trade and turning it from just “two ones, two twos, three players” into maneuvering part of that return into a young franchise quarterback prospect.

That’s the “NFL moneyball strategy” that many fans have been waiting for and whether Seattle will take that risk or if it’s the smart move is yet to be revealed.

Who would the Seahawks trade up for?

The expectation now and the expectation we’ve always had at Seaside Joe is that Alabama’s Bryce Young is the foregone conclusion at number one.

Even Rob Staton of SeahawksDraftBlog, who has long said that Young is QB4 in this class with an undersized bullet, has become resigned to Young being the number one pick in the draft. Welcome, Rob.

It’s not too late for me to be wrong and Rob to be right and if the Panthers don’t pick Young—but Albert Breer also emphasized on Monday that now all the talk is centering around Carolina taking the undersized QB—then I don’t expect Houston to trade down. They’ll take Bryce Young. It would be a pleasant surprise to me if there’s a non-zero chance that the Seahawks can trade for Young. I don’t think that’s on the table.

So for quarterbacks, that should narrow the list down to C.J. Stroud and Anthony Richardson. It’s still so hard for me to wrap my head around a team taking Richardson in the top-three, but how I FEEL is irrelevant—Seaside Joe is not perfect. I mean damn, he’s close. He’s so close. But the only thing that’s not unprecedented about the draft is that every year something unprecedented happens.

Former NFL QB John Beck, who now works on developing young QBs, emphasizes the importance of having a veteran who is willing to guide someone like Richardson through the process of adjusting to the league and that’s the kind of mentorship opportunity that Geno Smith seems excited to embrace if it happens.

Since I am not a “QB guru” and I have never met Richardson, or talked to his coaches, nor do I fully understand how complicated his necessary adjustments and improvements will be in order to become a viable starting quarterback, I don’t want to get trapped by saying that he will be a bust.

I can only say that if the Seahawks pick Richardson or Stroud, then they have put as much confidence in Pete Carroll, OC Shane Waldron, QBs coach Greg Olson, and John Schneider’s scouting department as they will be declaring for the prospect himself.

And I’ll be here for it. If it’s a disaster, at least it will be a spectacular disaster.

As far as the odds that Seattle could be trading up for Jalen Carter or a non-quarterback, that would be a huge shock. To an even greater degree than using the number two overall pick on a quarterback with 13 (mostly bad) starts in college. Teams trade up into the top-five for QBs and that’s it.

If the Seahawks want to come out of this draft with an awesome defensive prospect, they don’t need to make a trade to do it. And they will have more picks to try and land another one, if they don’t.

What would it cost to trade up?

Throw out your “Jimmy Johnson charts” because that’s not how I believe we need to calculate Seattle and Houston’s trade terms, if it comes down to that. I’ll go over what it would cost the Seahawks to trade up, who they are competing again, and who they would most likely trading up for after the paywall jump for premium subscribers. Join Regular Joes today to read the rest of this post and much more bonus content in the past and future!