Yeah, way too early to give a final grade at this juncture. If Cross ends up being a fixture at LT for the Soaring Twenties, that alone is huge. Mafe didn’t have quite the impact I thought he would in his rookie season, but I still have high hopes for him and it looks like many others do as well after reading
the Mafe thread.
‘Spoon
should be an absolute stud and the Superstar you are wanting out of the trade. I was caught by surprise when Goodell called his name last Thursday, but it didn’t take long for me to realize it was a GREAT pick. The plays that Riq and Spoon make, as well as the plays that Riq and Spoon
prevent should add up to many wins in the coming years. Coverage sacks should also increase to numbers we were accustomed to seeing several years ago. I’m ecstatic about that pick.
Derick Hall, like Mafe, will likely have a learning curve at the pro level and may not make his presence known right out of the gate, but if the people who are saying he has Cliff Avril potential are anywhere
near correct, then hell yes, sign me up for that one.
You only inquired about the 2 firsts and 2 seconds we got in the trade so other than this brief mention, I won’t get into other aspects of the trade like ditching RW’s massive salary or the players we got in return. Looks like Shelby is gone, but Fant may play a huge role in next season’s offense. We have so many weapons to choose from, so we’ll see how often Geno gets the ball to him/Parkinson/Dissly, but Geno does like him some Tight Ends. Very refreshing!
In Drew Lock, we have one of the league’s better backups - but I do still think he has a chance to be a third or even second tier starter in the NFL, whether that be in Seattle or elsewhere.
Should we have “replaced” RW with one of those 4 picks? Between the players we drafted AND with Geno’s surprise “comeback” season, I think they played it perfectly.
I’ll admit that I was on the Malik Willis train last year and thank heavens they didn’t go that route. Pickett? Ridder? Naw, I’m good.
As for this year’s draft, if Will Levis ends up being the Second Coming of Josh Allen then yeah, that may have been a mistake but I’m pretty sure he fell to the second round for a reason. Hendon Hooker is the one I would have wanted if we were going to draft a “second tier” QB, but we came out of that draft with CB1 and WR1. The Seattle Seahawks came out of a draft with CB1 and WR1. Holy catfish is that not a beautiful sentence?!
First tier QBs this year - I’ve seen many people on .NET, Twitter, Reddit, YouTube comments, etc. saying that we should have traded up for one of the “Big 3” QBs. How? Who? Once Carolina made the deal with the Bears, that ship sailed. Panthers, Texans, and Colts all needed a QB and they got their guy. Cards weren’t going to trade with a division rival and allow us to haunt them for YEARS if AR ends up being what some think he will. Had AR fallen to 5, I think we would have taken him and I’d have been okay with that, but it didn’t work out that way. Sure, we probably could have done something crazy like the Saints did for Ricky Williams and offered someone our entire draft and next year’s #1 to move up a few spots, but we weren’t “a QB away” from being the cream of the crop. This team had many holes and I think they filled them admirably - with starters
and depth.
We’re close. I like the approach of building the team and
then finding your QBOTF. Until then, I think we’re just fine with Geno and/or Drew. Drew is still young, and maybe he will even end up being “the guy” if he can get and keep his interceptions down to an acceptable level. Or maybe we get our guy in next year’s deep QB draft.
Tl;dr: I like the approach the Seattle Seahawks have taken with their utilization of the draft picks obtained from the Denver Broncos in the 2022 Russell Wilson trade.
