How good is Devon Witherspoon? Pete Carroll likens Seahawks’ top pick to Troy Polamalu

Who does the Seahawks’ top draft pick remind Pete Carroll of?

Oh, only Pro Football Hall of Famer Troy Polamalu.

Seattle’s 71-year-old football chief coached Polamalu at USC. That was before Polamalu became an eight-time Pro Bowl and two-time Super Bowl-champion safety for the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Carroll sees the same all-out, educated-risk approach Polamalu had before he got inducted in Canton in 2020 to what Devon Witherspoon did pressing receivers and brashly attacking passes and tackling ball carriers in the Big Ten as a cornerback at Illinois through last season.

“I sensed it watching him. The play-making. The choices he was making to go for it,” Carroll said Thursday night.

That’s why the Seahawks made Witherspoon the fifth pick in the 2023 NFL draft.

“His make-up...It’s how he approaches the game, the way he sees his opportunities and stuff. I’ve always held Troy in high regard in that,” Carroll said.

“This is the closest I’ve come to that, someone talking and acting and performing like that.

“I know I’ve said something that challenges a lot of stuff. But I’m just telling you how I feel.

“He’s somethin’.”

Carroll didn’t say any of this last year at this time, when he and Seattle drafted Tariq Woolen. That was in the first round, not with only the second top-five pick the Seahawks have had in 27 years that Witherspoon became Thursday.

Woolen became a Pro Bowl cornerback as a rookie for Seattle last season.

Witherspoon is already on track to be the starter opposite Woolen. And, Carroll said, he could play inside as a slot, nickel cornerback.

Not someday. Right now.

“We’ve not seen a guy like this,” Carroll, a former defensive back and defensive backs coach, said.

Make that, gushed.

Pete Carroll tested Witherspoon

The Seahawks met with Witherspoon at the league’s scouting combine in Indianapolis in March. Then they brought in Witherspoon as one of the 30 visits with prospects the league allows before each draft.

At that, Carroll quizzed Witherspoon one on one about the decisions he makes being so aggressive on passes in flight.

“So, when we met him...in the combine interview he was pretty quiet, pretty humble about it. I really didn’t get that sense,” Carroll said.

“When we got him here, we had a tremendous visit talking about really specific stuff that has to do with the choices he was making, because I was trying to figure it out; where is it coming from? After we were done, I was hitting him, man, I was going after him...and challenging him on what he was really seeing and feeling.

“And I came out of there thinking, ‘This is one of those guys.’

“Special, special guy.”

Jaxson Smith-Njigba’s Seattle fit

The coach and general manager were almost as praising in Jaxon Smith-Njigba. Seattle’s second pick of round one Thursday, at 20th overall, caught 15 passes for 347 yards and three touchdowns in a performance that wowed the Seahawks and the rest of football two seasons ago.

Schneider said if not for the hamstring injury Smith-Njigba got early in Ohio State’s opener last September that limited him to 2 1/2 games last season, the Seahawks wouldn’t have been able to draft him. He would have been a top-five or top-10 pick without that injury.

“He is extremely talented,” Schneider said.

Smith-Njigba gets the chance at third wide receiver that smaller Dee Eskridge hasn’t seized in two seasons full of injuries since Seattle drafted him in the second round in 2021. Veteran Marquise Goodwin couldn’t hold onto that role last season because he was hurt.

Now Smith-Njigba enters a role the Seahawks would like to expand for third downs and in the red zone in 2023.

“I really like him,” Carroll said. “I don’t mind saying, and telling him: This guy can play inside on the slot, right now. He’s got those kinds of skills. And he’s shown us everything that we need to see.

“We’ll still use the flexibility, because we love Tyler in there, as well. DK gets inside. We move our guys.

“But he really has a chance to be a big factor. ...We needed another guy to fit in with them.

“We sit Jaxson fitting in as that third guy...He can play right now.”

Passing on Jalen Carter

So why did the Seahawks choose a wide receiver and cornerback for the 32nd combined time in 14 drafts with Carroll and Schneider, when defensive tackle remains a mammoth need?

Why pass on Jalen Carter? The Georgia stud who most saw as the first-overall pick in this draft until off-the-field incidents and a bad pro-day workout in March was available to Seattle at five. Carroll and Schneider had talked to him in person three times in six weeks: at the combine, at his pro day and in Seattle on a pre-draft top-30 visit.

Schneider said, ultimately, it wasn’t hard to pass on Carter. He went to Philadelphia at nine.

It wasn’t hard to pass on Clemson’s Myles Murphy, Georgia’s Nolan Smith or other highly regarded edge rushers the Seahawks could have had at 20, either. Nor was it hard, the GM said, to resist the half-dozen trade offers he got late as the team was about to submit Smith-Njigba’s name to draft.

“No, because we had an order set up and we were ready to rip,” Schneider said. “I mean, there’s things that are pretty tempting, right, but you’ve just got to stay true to what you do.”

That includes Schneider and Carroll staying true to the draft board they, their scouts and assistant coaches built over months leading to Thursday.

This was an example of the Seahawks’ decision-makers resisting the temptation of supreme need — for more and better defensive tackles and pass rushers — and taking the players they have rated highest at the spot at which they picked.

“Absolutely,” Schneider said.

“We recognized we needed help on the defensive line.”

They still do. And they still have three more picks Friday in rounds two and three, four five choices in the first 83 picks of this draft overall.

Ultimately the red flags around Carter, the Polamalu qualities Carroll sees in Witherspoon and the proven Smith-Njigba’s readiness to fill an immediate want to improve the offense for Pro Bowl quarterback Geno Smith carried a surprising Seahawks first round.

Yet another one under Carroll and Schneider.

“Odd first round,” Schneider said. “Difference of opinions. The way the board came off. We had a lot of stuff going on, probably five or six teams we were pretty close with (to make a trade down).

“Yeah, really excited.”