How the Seahawks leveled with Geno Smith and Drew Lock as they courted the draft’s top QBs

On their ways out of Seahawks headquarters into contract uncertainty a few months ago, Geno Smith and Drew Lock each got an advisement from their general manager.

The Seahawks think the talks are why, after the NFL draft, Smith and Lock are still the team’s only two quarterbacks.

“Looking back on it, I think it’s a really good example of clear communication in any industry,” Schneider, the GM, said at the end of the draft this past weekend. “We got done with the end of the season, we were extremely honest with Geno, Drew.

“Geno had a phenomenal season, and we all get that. Drew had a great season, as well, the way he handled everything. Things didn’t go his way during training camp. Everybody knows that.”

Seattle had the fifth pick in this year’s draft, its highest of the Schneider/coach Pete Carroll era. It was the second time in 27 years the Seahawks had a top-five pick.

Plus, Smith’s and Lock’s contracts had ended.

Geno Smith’s situation

Schneider and Carroll told Smith, their record-setting Pro Bowl starter last season, and Lock, the former Denver Broncos starter who didn’t play a snap watching Smith excel in 2022, the Seahawks wanted to sign both back to the team.

Schneider and Carroll also told the 32-year-old Smith and Lock, 26, the Seahawks were strongly considering drafting a top quarterback. If the one the team wanted was still available when Seattle was to pick at fifth overall, they’d take him, to develop for the longer term.

Carroll, the team’s ultimate football authority, and Schneider felt because this was a once-in-a-generation pick for the Seahawks, they owed that to the franchise’s longer-term health. Especially at the sport’s most important position.

Meanwhile, Smith decided he wants to retire with the Seahawks. In March he re-signed with the Seahawks on a three-year deal with a base value of $75 million. It was notable for its relatively short length and its structure.

He agreed to an incentive-filled contract that gave Seattle financial flexibility to sign free agents for the leaky defense. For the team, the deal is something of a hedge. The Seahawks have the ability to get out of it and cut Smith after one or two years at relatively lower salary-cap impacts if Smith doesn’t approach his out-of-nowhere 2022 excellence.

In short, the way the team structured Smith’s contract kept the Seahawks in play to draft a top quarterback.

Drew Lock’s situation

A couple weeks before Smith re-signed, quarterbacks coach Dave Canales left Carroll’s staff in Seattle to become Tampa Bay’s new offensive coordinator. Lock, in particular, had grown tight with Canales last season. After every practice in which Smith took all the snaps to prepare the upcoming game, Lock stayed on the field for a half hour or more with his coach. Lock threw every pass in that week’s game plan to Canales.

Lock said he’d never had a coach do that with him before Canales did.

“They were diligent about it. David was really working to develop Drew all the way throughout, figuring that it may be any day now and all that kind of stuff,” Carroll said last weekend.

“That’s just something that (new quarterbacks coach) Greg (Olson) will do, as well. We’re not going to miss that now.”

In January, Lock said the coaching and preparation from Canales was “special.” He told The News Tribune at the end of last season he wanted to play.

Past mid-March, Lock was still unsigned. The Buccaneers and Canales needed a quarterback. It seemed Lock would sign with Tampa Bay.

Did Carroll and the Seahawks fear that would happen?

“Sure, yeah,” Carroll said. “They would love him.”

Instead, the Buccaneers signed veteran quarterback Baker Mayfield.

Lock, whom Seattle had acquired from Denver in the March 2022 Russell Wilson trade (the trade which is why the Seahawks had the fifth pick in this draft), then decided to return to the Seahawks. He signed a one-year, $4 million contract a week after Smith re-signed.

“It’s just a statement about him coming back to us and staying with us that we’re very happy about that,” Carroll said last weekend.

Seahawks’ ‘selfie tour’

Meanwhile throughout March, Carroll and Schneider went on their tour of the campus pro days of this draft’s top quarterbacks. They very publicly shared online photos of themselves smiling with C.J. Stroud at Ohio State, Bryce Young at Alabama, Will Levis at Kentucky and Anthony Richardson at Florida.

It became known as the Seahawks’ “selfie tour.”

Carroll said of their tour, “It’s been a freakin’ blast.”

The Seahawks were particularly intrigued by Richardson. They loved his arm strength, his athleticism, his ability to run and the fact his ceiling is perhaps unknown because he started just 13 games at Florida. He could come to Seattle and learn behind Smith this year and perhaps next, and still could perhaps be that longer-term answer Carroll and Schneider felt they owed the franchise at quarterback.

Thursday night, round one of the draft, Young went first overall, to Carolina. Stroud went second, to Houston. Richardson went fourth, to Indianapolis.

The one quarterback the Seahawks wanted in this draft and realistically thought might be there at five was gone. They never had to decide.

The Seahawks selected Illinois shutdown cornerback Devon Witherspoon, considered to be this draft’s best player at that key position. Then with their second pick in round one, at 20, they got Smith a new target as inside slot receiver: Ohio State’s Jaxon Smith-Njiba.

They didn’t draft a quarterback with any of their other nine choices, either. Wilson in 2012 and Alex McGough late in the 2018 draft remain the only QBs Carroll and Schneider have taken in 14 drafts running the Seahawks.

“There’s three quarterbacks that went right ahead of us,” Schneider said, “and you can’t just push it because of, like, a narrative.

“It has to feel right for everybody, the whole team, the locker room, coaches.”

Through it all — the team’s highest pick in eons, the contract uncertainties, the selfie tour — the Seahawks enter 2023 with the same quarterbacks they had in 2022. Smith is the starter. Lock is the backup who will only play if Smith gets hurt or falters badly. The team reportedly agreed to sign a third quarterback as an undrafted rookie free agent immediately after the draft, Holton Ahlers from East Carolina.

The straight talk worked. For now, anyway.

“So to be able to work the free agency process the way we did with that clear communication, to go into the draft where we let them know, ‘Hey, look, we have never drafted this high. There’s a chance we could take a quarterback and we got to be ready if that player comes to us,’ they knew that,” Schneider said of Smith and Lock.

“They still signed back with us. And we embraced them, they embraced us.

“So I think it’s a great example of like the impeccable communication and honesty and, yeah, I’m proud of everybody, the way everybody handled it. Their agents. The coaches. Everybody in personnel. Everybody.

“It’s been great.”