Up until now: Tyreke Smith
Seaside Joe 1214: He had a dozen college scholarship offers before his first high school football game, but he can't squander this last opportunity
July is Rookie Month at Seaside Joe. If you’re new here, Seaside Joe is a daily Seahawks newsletter that has posted for 1,214 days in a row. We like to compare ourselves to the top-25 sports newsletters at Substack and the goal is to be on top of that list, so as a reminder let’s quickly review how those other football sites are doing with the offseason.
There are four NFL newsletters in the top-25: Matt Miller’s “The Draft Scout” posted two articles in June, both behind a paywall, and five articles in May; Tyler Dunne’s “Go Long” posted 11 articles in June; Seth Keysor’s “The Chief in the North” posted six articles in June, all behind a paywall; Cody Alexander’s “Match Quarters” posted four articles in June, three behind a paywall.
I wrote 36 articles at Seaside Joe in June and 37 articles in July, with seven paywalled for Regular Joes subscribers at $5/month or $55 for the full year, and there is more bonus content coming during the 2022 season. Consider a contribution knowing that you will be supporting a newsletter that has consistently posted 1,214 days in a row—with 13 more articles in June than the top-four Substack football newsletters combined.
That’s 73 articles about the Seattle Seahawks in the past two months alone, the so-called dead months, which is more than the entire staff contributes in a full year at one of your favorite “blogs” about the “Hawks.”
Now onto the second article of Rookie Month.
The Seahawks selected defensive end Tyreke Smith with the 158th pick of the draft, which came five slots after Seattle selected cornerback Tariq Woolen and 21 slots ahead of the Packers taking Kingsley Enagbare, a defensive end out of South Carolina who had been getting day one buzz for months prior to the draft.
Did the Seahawks make the right choice with Smith over the other pass rushers still available in the fifth round? That’s up to the future to reveal.
Here is everything we know about Tyreke Smith up until now.
Quit football in the sixth grade because of concussions
I don’t know what is more disturbing: Getting riddled with concussions before you turn 11-years-old or having a team of high school football coaches bother that kid incessantly until he agreed to return to the field anyway.
In a 2017 “Sports Stars of Tomorrow” segment with Smith, the Cleveland Heights High School edge rusher detailed how his parents pulled him out of football because of concussion concerns and he set his sights on basketball instead. But even though 6’3 is considered tall in the normal world, Smith would have to be a phenomenal baller to reach the NBA at that height, where the current average height is 6’6—and that’s the lowest it has been in 40 years.
That’s just how I start to rationalize why Smith’s athletic gifts were seen to fit better on a field than a basketball court, because if Smith was walking down the halls as a 6’7 sophomore then football coaches wouldn’t stand a chance.
Was coveted by colleges before his first play
As detailed by Dane Brugler in his The Beast scouting report for 2022, even though Tyreke Smith was a late starter in football, he was already drawing interest from colleges before his first game, including a dozen scholarship offers.
When he was 13, Smith and his family relocated from Los Angeles to Cleveland Heights (his father’s hometown) to care for his grandparents. He enrolled at Cleveland Heights High and earned a spot on the varsity basketball team as a freshman. Prior to his junior season, the football coaches coaxed him back to the sport, and he was so impressive in practices that he started receiving scholarship offers before his first game.
Smith posted 70 tackles, 23 tackles for a loss, and 11 sacks as a senior even though he also missed time with a broken fibula. By his senior campaign, Smith had 40 scholarship offers, which he narrowed down to Ohio State, Alabama, USC, Penn State, and Oregon.
It is those kind of details that key you into the fact that Tyreke Smith practically had to do more work to stop his path to the NFL—even if it would be as an undrafted free agent—then to create it.
High school coach’s advice: Learn to use your hands and feet
Mac Stephens is the head coach at Cleveland Heights and he recently won two awards for Coach of the Year in his region. In an interview with The Ozone, Stephens mentioned that Tyreke Smith had “freakish” athleticism, but that his only weakness was that he didn’t quite know what to do with his physical gifts.
"His only weakness is learning how to use hands and feet better," coach Mac Stephens told The Ozone's Ben van Ooyen. "Right now he can get away with it on the high school level, but in college he will need improvement in that area. Him being able to play lower will help him be a dominant player at the college level. What makes him different is that for a guy his size he can do some freakish things athletically. I’ve seen him do a windmill dunk with a basketball which is pretty impressive for a guy that weighs 260. His get off out of his defensive stance is very quick, which makes him tough to block."
Tyreke Smith is built so much different than other high schoolers that he was able to dominate the vast majority of his opponents without needing to learn technique at the same level as his peers. To the point where he was a highly sought after recruit before he had ever even made his return to the field after a five-year absence from football.
Older brother is attempting to become an even later bloomer
In fact, there is so much athleticism running through the Smith family that Tyreke’s older brother Malik, who had been Tyreke’s inspiration to try a basketball career in the first place, recently signed with the Cleveland Browns after a tryout. This after a college career in which Malik Smith had exclusively played basketball, but then he started training with former Packers tight end Jermichael Finley and now he’s attempting to make the NFL… and getting a lot closer than most people who stop playing football in high school.
“He’s a hard-ass worker. He’s a sponge, just willing to learn. The sky is the limit for him,” the younger Smith said of his brother “He just started training for this, and you can already see the transition he’s had. The more work he puts in, the better he’s going to get. I feel like he can be a great tight end.”
Tyreke Smith picked Ohio State for pass rushing lineage, but failed to match his peers
The number three defensive end in the 2018 recruiting class, five spots ahead of Aidan Hutchinson, Smith chose Ohio State over the other four finalists. He cited the coaches and the career of Nick Bosa as inspirations towards making that final decision. But while Bosa blossomed into a dominant pass rusher, the two were even teammates for one season in 2018, that included 29 tackles for a loss and 17.5 sacks over 29 career games, Smith never found his footing over a four-year college career that included a lot of absences and many games with little to show for his efforts.
Playing alongside Chase Young and making an appearance in all 14 games as a true freshman in 2018, Smith finished with nine tackles and zero tackles for a loss. That same year, Bosa had four sacks in three games, Young had 10.5 sacks in 13 games, and Dre’Mont Jones had 8.5 sacks in 14 games.
The next season, Young further solidified himself as a top-three pick by posting 21 TFL, 16.5 sacks, and 7 forced fumbles in 12 games. Though it may seem unfair to compare any edge rusher to Chase Young or Nick Bosa, let’s keep in mind that Tyreke Smith was not “any edge rusher”; he was the edge rusher chosen by Ohio State to follow in their footsteps. Young had even cited Smith as a younger brother figure.
Smith had groin surgery in the summer of 2019, hoping that would improve his play on the field since he would no longer have to deal with a pain he was suffering through since high school. Smith was held out of Week 1, then recorded his first sack by taking down Desmond Ridder in Week 2, but played in only one game over the next six weeks. He posted two sacks on November 9 against Maryland, his only other sacks of the 2019 season, which included eight games by Smith.
A very short 2020 season
When the Big Ten finally returned for football in 2020, long after most leagues had announced their intentions to play through the pandemic, Ohio State was left with an eight-game schedule. And Tyreke Smith was still being viewed as “Ohio State’s next great pass rusher.”
“I want to be the best D-end that comes out of here, and that’s my personal goal,” Smith said in September. “I know I’m with the best coach, and I got my teammates around me that are going to get me better.”
But Smith didn’t even really grab onto a starting role as a junior and over seven appearances, finished with only one sack on the season, a takedown of Michigan State backup Rocky Lombardi during an Ohio State blowout.
Yes, the season was short, but clearly a major disconnect still existed between the dominance of players like Chase Young, Nick Bosa, and the erratic play of Tyreke Smith after three years with one of the top college programs—surrounded by future NFL players on defense—in the nation. Teammate Jonathon Cooper led the team with 3.5 sacks that season and there have been some comparisons between the two.
Cooper was a seventh round pick by the Broncos in 2021 and transitioned from defensive end to outside linebacker, the same transition expected of Smith in Clint Hurtt’s defense with the Seahawks.
Tyreke Smith’s last stand
As the senior leader of Ohio State’s defensive line, Tyreke Smith posted three sacks in 10 games—one each against Indiana, Penn State, and Nebraska over a three-week span—and didn’t prove himself as a worrisome threat to opposing quarterbacks. Smith had only two tackles for a loss on the season other than those three sacks.
He may have “practically doubled” his pressures, but he didn’t have many pressures to begin with.
Same as when he was a high school recruit, Tyreke Smith would impress NFL coaches by what he might do rather than what he’s already proven on the field.
The combine
Tyreke Smith measured 6’3, 254 lbs, 33.25” arms, 34” vertical, 9’9 broad jump, and ran a 4.86 in the 40-yard dash with a 1.72 10-yard split. Despite how physically gifted he is, these numbers do not place Smith near the top-10 for edge rushers in the 2022 draft. By comparison, Hutchins ran a 4.74 at 260, while Travon Walker ran a 4.51 at 272.
And anything over a 1.70 10-yard split is unimpressive when being measured against NFL defensive linemen.
Smith was also invited to the Senior Bowl, which is an event that often links the Seahawks to their future draftees, and that is likely where his journey to Seattle really got off the ground.
Clint Hurtt is not impressed
In episode two of The Sound of the Seahawks, defensive coordinator Clint Hurtt can be seen telling Smith: “Your sorry ass ain’t gone to work since we got here.”
This may be an inside joke. This may be some harmless ribbing. This may be serious. It’s hard to know without actually being involved with the Seahawks practices on a carnal basis. But consider this as context:
Tyreke Smith has an uphill battle to make Seattle’s final 53-man roster, let alone to become an NFL starter after a four-year career at Ohio State that was stamped with injuries, inconsistency, and ineffectiveness as a pass rusher. That uphill battle means that ideally comments going to Tyreke Smith should only really reflect one attitude: “Man, this guy really doesn’t stop working.”
Instead of the defensive coordinator ribbing you for “not going to work”, wouldn’t it be better if the clip was this: “Damn it, Tyreke, what the hell are you doing here again? Do you EVER go home? You must not have anyone who loves you because I know your ass isn’t anywhere else but here!”
That’s how you would haze Russell Wilson, right? That’s how you would haze the guys who have a reputation for loving nothing else but football. Whether Smith has that relationship to football is unknown but he’s getting more chances this year to prove himself on the field.
How impactful can he really be at this level?
My expectations: Benson Mayowa
Benson Mayowa, 6’3, 252 lbs, went undrafted out of Idaho in 2013, then signed with the Seahawks on May 13th. He was good enough to make two appearances that year but then waived in 2014 before catching on for two seasons with the Oakland Raiders.
It wasn’t until his fourth year in the league, his first with the Cowboys, that Mayowa recorded more than one sack: He had six sacks and nine QB hits in 13 games.
Mayowa’s production suffered in 2017, then he came up for four sacks and 11 QB hits with the Cardinals in 2018, followed by a return to the Raiders that included seven sacks in 2019. Finally, Mayowa played the last two seasons for Ken Norton Jr., recording seven sacks and 11 QB hits in 28 games.
He’s not great. He might not even be good, relatively speaking to NFL edge rushers. However, Mayowa has played 115 career NFL games and hung onto roles year after year with various teams, likely in large thanks due to his effort and commitment and ability to impress coaches camp after camp.
For Tyreke Smith to reach this level, we may not want to hear anymore “You ain’t worked your ass off yet” comments from the defensive coordinator. If he can stay healthy, if he can eliminate quotes like those ones, then perhaps Smith could also carve out a long-term role as a rotational edge rusher in obvious passing situations.
This may be Smith’s first offseason with the Seattle Seahawks. But it ought to treat it like it could be his last.
We’ll see what happens in the future, this is just everything we know up until now.
I like another 5th round guy that I have read is on the bubble in 22, but I think he puts it together this year (year 3), especially in the 3-4 scheme. Alton Robinson, Cliff Avril's protégé.
Sounds like another wasted draft pick.