Seahawks draft DT Byron Murphy II with 16th pick in NFL draft

Seattle president of football operations John Schneider said the team would consider options to trade down to acquire more picks. They have no second-rounder after dealing it last October to the Giants as part of the Williams trade and will not pick again until 81st overall in the third round.

But the allure of taking Murphy proved too strong, and for all of Seattle’s reputation for trading on draft day, the Seahawks have not traded their first-round pick on draft day since the 2019 draft.

Murphy will get a slotted four-year contract that will pay him $16.083 million over four years which includes an $8.5 million signing bonus. He will carry a $2.924 million cap hit in 2024.

They arrived at pick 16 with their pick of every defensive player in the draft other than Laiatu Latu, the former Husky who turned into one of the best edge rushers in college football last year after reviving his career at UCLA.

Latu’s pick at 15 came after the first 14 teams all went with offensive players. It was reported to be the first time that many players on one side of the ball had been taken consecutively.

That run of offensive players to start the draft included six quarterbacks in the top 12, the last being Bo Nix of Oregon. Earlier, UW’s Michael Penix Jr. went to Atlanta at eight.

The Seahawks had planned for the chance that no QBs considered worth taking in the first round would be gone by 16 by trading last month for Sam Howell of Washington. The 23-year-old Howell is younger than both Penix and Nix and already has 18 NFL starts.

They could still take a quarterback in the middle rounds, or wait until after the draft to sign one as an undrafted free agent to fill out a quarterback room that for now includes only Geno Smith and Howell.

It was the first time six quarterbacks were taken in the top 12 picks and the first time six were selected in the first round since the famous 1983 draft that included future Hall of Famers John Elway and Dan Marino.