Seahawks must fix D-line. Will they with Jalen Carter at 5? Why a trade down doesn’t fit

Any Seahawks fan who knows what 12 means also knows to wait and not get too excited at the beginning of drafts.

For a dozen springs, first rounds have dragged on past three hours with Seattle not picking. Then, when it’s finally time to excite their fans with their new first-round pick, the Seahawks ... trade down.

It’s been as dependable for the Pacific Northwest as April rain.

Until now.

This year, the Seahawks are where they’ve been just once in a quarter century — and where they don’t expect to be again anytime soon. Thanks to trading Russell Wilson to Denver last year then the Broncos plummeting to a 5-12 season, Seattle has the fifth-overall choice in the 2023 NFL draft that begins Thursday.

This is only the second time in 27 years the Seahawks have had a top-five pick.

Coach Pete Carroll and general manager John Schneider finally have a first-round grade for players that will be available when Seattle makes its first choice.

Heck, the Seahawks might have the entire defensive draft board available to them when they pick Thursday. That’s why office staffers, landscapers, pretty much everybody working at the team’s Renton headquarters have an opinion on whom the team should draft first this year.

Jalen Carter? Will Anderson? Anthony Richardson? Any and just about all of this draft’s top prospects are in play for the Seahawks.

“Everybody is very excited about the fifth pick. So we have a lot of general managers in this building right now, and head coaches,” Schneider said, joking.

“Being up there with a fifth pick, I think, is just really exciting, and you have way more coverage and accessibility to all the prospects.”

What makes this Seahawks draft likely the most impacting in a generation is the fact the team doesn’t just have the fifth pick. Seattle also owns its own first-round choice, at 20th overall. It has the 37th pick five selections into round two, and the 52nd choice on Friday.

“Obviously everybody is focused on five, and rightfully so,” Schneider said. “But 20th pick is extremely important, as is 37.”

Carroll is always “jacked.” But he REALLY is fired up for being right in the middle of the top choices in this year’s draft.

He took selfies on his and the Seahawks’ tour of C.J. Stroud’s, Bryce Young’s, Will Levis’ and Richardson’s quarterback pro days like a teenager front row at a pop concert.

The team has five of the first 83 picks Thursday and Friday, and 10 selections overall this year. Saturday, the draft’s third and final day, the Seahawks own a choice in the bottom half of round four, two picks within four spots in round five, a selection in round six and a pick in round seven.

“What I think is exciting about this one is you get the first challenge coming up at five and then we’ve got a whole other one at 20. And day two we come right back again,” Carroll said. “Those three big events of those early picks, it kind of comes back at us in a hurry. Makes it really fun and a challenge, and a lot of scenarios, more so than normal. That keeps us just active and functioning and having fun doing it.

“The whole thing is pretty cool.”

“Five of the top 83 is probably the one thing that really stands out,” Schneider said.

Seahawks coaches went through the team’s entire draft board this past weekend. Tuesday night, Schneider and Carroll are scheduled to brief team chair Jody Allen on Seattle’s draft plan.

Wednesday, their board will be locked and ready to go. And teams will be calling asking if the Seahawks want to trade that fifth pick.

They don’t, by the way. But they’ll listen to see if anyone offers more than they expected, as the Broncos did before Carroll changed his mind and green-lighted trading Wilson 13 months ago.

Must add to defensive line

You could make a case that perhaps eight of the Seahawks’ 10 picks in this draft should be for defense. Specifically, the defensive front seven.

The Seahawks have just two defensive ends and two tackles on the roster. Two of those four D-linemen didn’t play for Seattle last year (Dre’Mont Jones and Jarran Reed, signed in free agency last month).

Bryan Mone ended the 2022 season on injured reserve. He is recovering from an anterior cruciate ligament injury in his knee. Myles Adams is a 25-year-old tackle Seattle re-signed this month for one year at minimum salary ($870,000). He has played in 12 games in his NFL career.

Asked how he feels about depth and quality at defensive line entering the draft, Carroll didn’t dodge.

“We’ve got some work to do,” the coach and defensive architect said.

“We made some big commitments that have gotten us to this point ($51.5 million to sign Jones from Denver, $9 million for two years for Reed), and we’re really excited about it. But it has left us with a few question marks we’ve got to get filled out, so there’s plenty of time to get that done.”

They also have plenty of picks to do that.

Look for the Seahawks to spend perhaps multiple picks among those five they have in the first 83 selections on outside, edge players on defense.

Because of their value at pressuring quarterbacks and shutting down passing games in a pass-first league, edge rushers and cornerbacks are the most expensive defensive players in free agency every year. Drafting one in the first and second rounds gives a team what its scouts see as an elite talent at ultra-value positions on four-year relatively inexpensive rookie contracts. Teams could have first-round picks for five years. League rules give teams fifth-year contract options on first-rounders. That leaves salary-cap space to buy multiple players at the less-expensive interior defensive positions, plus for the line of scrimmage or on offense.

That’s what the Seahawks did signing back Bobby Wagner and signing Devin Bush in free agency from Pittsburgh last month as new inside linebackers. Reed has been mostly an interior defensive linemen in his career. Jones was a tackle at the start of his career with Denver in 2019.

That is why top draft prospects such as Anderson of Alabama, Tyree Wilson from Texas Tech and Myles Murphy from Clemson would fit the Seahawks.

Anderson and Wilson would fit any team.

Seattle hosted Anderson last week for one of the team’s 30 pre-draft visits, on the final day players could visit teams before the picking begins. If Arizona, which doesn’t need a quarterback having recently minted Kyler Murray, doesn’t trade down and keeps its third-overall pick it may take Anderson. He’s this draft’s top edge rusher.

If the Cardinals do trade down with a quarterback-needy team at three, Indianapolis likely will take a quarterback at four. That likely would leave Anderson available for the Seahawks to choose. And they likely would.

Uchenna Nwosu is entering the final year of his Seahawks contract. He led the team in sacks last year and will be expensive to keep. Bruce Irvin was Seattle’s other edge rushing outside linebacker. He’s unsigned and deciding whether to play again this year, which would take him past his 36th birthday.

Wilson from Texas Tech played in a 4-3 scheme in college (Seattle plays a 3-4), though his talent as a pass rusher would find a place in any NFL defense. He could be among the first half-dozen players taken Thursday. Seattle has been studying his potential fit in its remodeling defense.

Murphy is 6 feet 5, 268 pounds. He had 18-1/2 sacks in three seasons for Clemson. He’s expected to be available when the Seahawks’ second turn comes up in round one, at 20th overall.

Then there’s Carter.

He also made a pre-draft visit to Seattle. In January, many saw the dominant defensive lineman at national-champion Georgia as the first pick in this draft.

But then Carter was implicated in incidents that allegedly led to a single-car crash Jan. 15 that killed University of Georgia offensive lineman Devin Willock and recruiting staff member Chandler LeCroy. A warrant for his arrest in Athens, Georgia, forced Carter to briefly leave the NFL scouting combine in Indianapolis in early March, to turn himself in.

Carter eventually pleaded no contest to misdemeanor charges of reckless driving and racing. Athens-Clarke County Municipal Court sentenced him to 12 months of probation, a $1,000 fine and a mandate of 50 hours of community service, among other stipulations.

Police alleged in an arrest warrant Carter was racing his 2021 Jeep Trackhawk against the 2021 Ford Expedition driven by LeCroy at the time of the crash. Willock was a passenger in the SUV LeCroy was driving.

Carroll and the Seahawks have taken players with pre-draft red flags many times before. Defensive linemen Frank Clark and Malik McDowell were Seattle’s top picks in 2015 and ‘17, respectively.

Carroll has already stated this offseason Seattle’s defense needs a game-changing rusher offenses have to fear and plan for, an Aaron Donald-, Nick Bosa-like force Seattle’s division-rival Rams and 49ers have.

Carter has the potential to be that for the Seahawks. They met with him in person three times in six weeks from the combine through his pro day and the pre-draft visit in Seattle.

If Carroll and Schneider like what they found in talking to him and in the team’s deep investigation of Carter (like that of most top prospects) that began about 12 months ago, the Seahawks appear likely to choose Carter at five.

Not the prime year to trade down

Schneider said last week he’d received “periphery” calls from teams about Seattle possibly trading down in round one. He said those calls will heat up in urgency and depth Tuesday and Wednesday this week, right up to and through the Seahawks choosing fifth Thursday.

The GM has traded Seattle’s original first-round pick in 10 of the last 11 years, either to move down in that draft or to acquire a veteran player (Jamal Adams in 2020, Jimmy Graham in 2015, Percy Harvin in 2013).

But eight of those 10 trades of original first-rounders Schneider’s made have come when the Seahawks were picking at 25, 32, 31, 26, 26, 18, 21 and 23 in round one.

This year, the Seahawks are in the highest spot of any draft since they picked linebacker Aaron Curry fourth in 2009.

That seems like the wrong time to trade out of that once-in-a-generation spot.

“OK, we’re getting a pretty good feel for what it looks like,” Schneider said of Seattle’s draft board and plan.

“And now (it’s), how do we go execute our game plan?”