NFL Draft: Seahawks’ Pete Carroll says opportunity ‘absolutely there’ to add top QB despite keeping Geno Smith

The Seattle Seahawks have a Pro Bowl quarterback in Geno Smith, who they just committed to on Monday with a three-year, $105 million contract to prevent him from hitting the open market as a free agent. Yet, with Seattle holding a top-five pick for the first time in the Pete Carroll-John Schneider era (since 2010), the head coach and the general manager are relishing the opportunity to potentially select one of the 2023 NFL Draft‘s top passers. 

“We are totally connected to the quarterbacks that are coming out,” Seahawks coach Pete Carroll said on Feb. 28 at the NFL Scouting Combine in Indianapolis, via ESPN. “This is a really huge opportunity for us. It’s a rare opportunity. We’ve been drafting in the low 20’s for such a long time. You just don’t get the chance with these guys. So we’re deeply involved with all that.”   

Carroll is far from ruling out drafting a quarterback in the first round, saying the opportunity to add a rookie signal-caller to the squad is “absolutely there.”

“We can do whatever we need to do, which is a whole other discussion that’s really exciting,” he said, via the team’s official website. “The coaches are working at it, and the scouts are working at it to try to position this thing — when you’re at five, this is different than what we’re used to seeing. This is really fun, because you can pretty much predict what’s going to happen with four different choices, so which one is it?”

The only reason the Seahawks, a playoff team in 2022, are selecting fifth overall is because of their trade with the Broncos that sent their longtime face-of-the-franchise quarterback Russell Wilson to Denver in exchange for three players (QB Drew Lock, TE Noah Fant and DL Shelby Harris) along with five draft picks (two firsts, two seconds and one fifth). The Broncos went 5-12 in Wilson’s first year in Denver, a season in which Wilson had career lows in completion percentage (60.5%), passing touchdowns (15) and passer rating (84.4).