Seahawks draft thoughts: Sizing up Byron Murphy II
Byron Murphy isn't Aaron Donald, but could be a replacement and upgrade for Dre'Mont Jones: Seaside Joe 1882
SEASIDE JOE
APR 26, 2024
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I start with Aaron Donald today, not as a comparison for Byron Murphy II but as a reminder that this is a time of year when people are very confident that they know things that they can’t possibly know.
In 2014, people didn’t know what to do with Aaron Donald. He was like the Ichiro of football or the Russell Wilson of defense; Donald posted 11 sacks as a true sophomore defensive tackle at Pitt, more than senior edge rusher Melvin Ingram, a soon-to-be top-20 pick; two years later, Donald won four national awards (Nagurski, Bednarik, Outland, Lombardi), had 29 tackles for a loss (5 more than second place), and another 11 sacks (more than Khalil Mack, Demarcus Lawrence, and Dee Ford). Now I’m going to give you an accurate usage of the word “literally”: Aaron Donald is also literally one-of-a-kind.
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Bruce Feldman posts his “freaks” list of the most athletic college players every year and Donald might be the all-time freak of freaks. At the 2014 combine, Donald had a DiMaggio-like record by running a 4.65 40-yard dash as a defensive tackle, plus 99th percentile 10-yard split, 97th percentile 3-cone, 95th-percentile broad jump, 91st percentile bench press, 89th percentile shuttle. If you didn’t know that Donald was 6’1, 285 lbs (under 10th percentile on both), you’d be stupified trying to come up with reasons for him to have not been the number one pick in the entire draft over Jadeveon Clowney (character concerns? medical red flags? makes up a fake family to lie on his taxes?) because this is Aaron Donald’s prospect resume in a nutshell:
He’s the most athletic defensive tackle to ever enter the league and he’s also one of the most terrorizing players in college defense history. The end result for some analysts, like NFL.com’s Nolan Nawrocki who gave him a 4th-5th round grade and said he would be a special teamer (remember before Ichiro got to the MLB, people said he’d probably hit .250 and steal some bases), was “If I’ve never seen it, it doesn’t exist.”
“Short, scrappy, instinctive, highly productive defensive lineman who does not look the part, but inspires confidence he can be an exception to the rule. Is the type you root for and has the quickness, athleticism and motor to earn a spot as a rotational three-technique in a fast-flowing 4-3 scheme.”
WalterFootball noted Donald’s dominance, including as easily the best player at the Senior Bowl, but comparing him to Randy Starks (a good player, not a great one and still much taller and heavier than Donald) shows a lack of belief. I.e., if there had never been a 6’1, 285 lb success story at defensive tackle before, why would it happen now? Because Aaron Donald was a rocked-up former wrestler who couldn’t be blocked in college and wouldn’t be blocked in the NFL largely thanks to the fact that guards, centers, and tackles had also never seen a defensive tackle like him before. Even more unfathomable than his listed weight, Donald said his regular playing weight on gamedays wasn’t actually 285…it was more like two-SIXTY-five…He most likely got his weight up for the combine because he knew that if people would have a problem with 285, they certainly wouldn’t understand the truth being a lot lighter than that at 265.
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Fans, media tend to overlook stats this time of year because there isn’t a good correlation between stats in the NFL and in college, and everyone was puzzled by how he’d translate to the league at his size, but as a player he was Warren Sapp and as an athlete he was Julius Peppers and that’s also not something teams could ignore. Some did, 12 teams passed on Donald, including the Rams as they picked tackle Greg Robinson with the second overall pick, until finally a St. Louis coach BEGGED general manager Les Snead to take him at 13.
10 years later, we now know Aaron Donald’s weakness feeds into his strength: He’s the most under-sized (and also in the conversation as the best) defensive tackle in NFL history. This is where we finally get into Byron Murphy II not being Aaron Donald, but also why size doesn’t matter as much as what you do with it.
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Who is Byron Murphy in the NFL?
Like Donald and not 360 lb Texas teammate T’Vondre Sweat or former Longhorn Poona Ford, Byron Murphy is a “rocked-up” style defensive tackle at 6’0, 297 lbs with 32.375” arms, which is less than a half-inch shorter than Donald’s. Here he is getting the phone call from John Schneider and to his left is his mom’s reaction to finding out that CenturyLink is now Lumen Field.
Instead of looking like a muscled up version of me (fat and flabby minus the muscle), Murphy comes off more as a running back who went too far in the weight room. I mean, he’s literally (there we go again) closer in size to Jerome Bettis (5’11, played at 255-260 and in his career finale in the Super Bowl win over the Seahawks he was reportedly closer 280) than he is to Sweat but like Donald, Murphy’s going to attempt to win with power (455 lb front squat is exceptional, I hear) and pass rushing moves. There might even be a higher opinion of Murphy’s run defense coming out of college than there was about Donald’s run defense coming out of Pitt.
But everyone knows that Murphy is not Aaron Donald.
Donald is one of the best college football players of all-time, while Murphy’s career at Texas is barely noteworthy unless you’ve been watching the Longhorns every week. Seattle Sports’ Brock Huard noted before the draft that he wouldn’t pick Murphy at 16 because he never came out of a Texas game thinking, “He’s one of the best players on the field”.
Murphy had 8.5 tackles for a loss in 2023 (20 fewer than Donald’s final season at Pitt) and five sacks, both of which check in behind teammate Ethan Burke, a guy I’ve never heard of until right now and who is built like this:
That doesn’t look like a guy who led Texas in sacks, that looks like a guy who owes me $25.
This isn’t to discredit Murphy or to dampen your hopes, it’s just why some people see 16th overall as a fair—if not early—slot for him. He’s not coming with the Aaron Donald college career or close to it, but instead has been given a best case scenario of Grady Jarrett which is also really valuable: Jarrett had 5.5 career sacks at Clemson then was drafted with the 137th pick in 2015. Jarrett’s a two-time Pro Bowl defensive tackle on the Falcons at 6’, 305 lbs with mostly comparable combine results although he didn’t run as fast (5.06 vs. 4.87) as Murphy.
But these numbers (40 time, tackles for a loss, arm length, etc.) are not formulaic tools that can be used to project a player’s future with any certainty. Chris Simms rated Murphy as the best defensive tackle in the draft without a close second.
“One of my favorite guys at the combine, one of my favorite humans I met in the draft process…incredible ball of muscle and explosion…pliable, bendable, disruption, can hold his ground despite his size…can hold his ground and not be moved…like Jalen Carter, he wins wrestling matches…love his legs, legs are elite, high-cut waist and arm length not bad…it’s a no-brainer…wins even when he’s pushed out of position…balance is unreal…great instincts and eyes, he sees the ball and what’s going on…he’s willing to throw his body into harm’s way to stop the running back…”
Murphy’s spiderweb chart looks looks similar to the same half-grapefruit as Donald’s:
It was numbers like these that made Aaron Donald both the best defensive tackle prospect in NFL Draft HISTORY and yet it only took one or two (height and weight) for him to go 13th instead of first, second, or third. It’s not like Donald or Russell Wilson came out of nowhere, these were prospects that had “everything” (Wilson was famously noted as “the asterisk” by FootballOutsiders because he would have been a top-3 pick if not for his height) teams wanted except the one thing they didn’t understand: How could a player who doesn’t fit the mold be as good as the greats who came before him?
Sometimes not fitting the mold is what make you better than the greats.
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Is Byron Murphy II one of those?
I do not expect Murphy to be an All-Pro defensive tackle in the NFL, but that’s a high bar and we never really know who those players will be at draft time. Recent defensive tackles on that level have been Donald, Jeffery Simmons (19th pick), Cameron Heyward (31st), Chris Jones (37th), Dexter Lawrence (17th), Javon Hargrave (89th), Justin Madubuike (71st), Daron Payne (13th), Derrick Brown (7th), and Quinnen Williams (3rd).
On one hand, Murphy is the preeminent draft prospect of the 2024 defensive tackles as we’ve been through 32 picks so far and the only other player picked who might play the same position is Missouri’s Darius Robinson, who went 27th overall to the Cardinals. Jer’Zhan Newton was thought to be in the running as a top-20 pick, but he’s as available as Braden Fiske, Kris Jenkins, Michael Hall, Ruke Orhorhoro, and T’Vondre Sweat going into day two.
There’s no question that Schneider put his foot in the ground and stamped that Seattle was going to come out of the draft with the top defensive tackle prospect once the top-14 picks were offensive players and his highest-graded defensive player in the entire class made it to pick 16 given the probable gap between Murphy and the available defensive players at pick 81. Especially given the contracts handed out to Chris Jones ($32m), Christian Wilkins ($27.5m), Madubuike ($24.5m), and Derrick Brown ($24m) this year.
Plus, you put a great defensive tackle on your defense and you might find yourself deep in the playoffs more often than other positions: Chris Jones is a top-3 player on the Chiefs, Madubuike helped lead the Ravens to the AFC Championship, Donald willed the Rams to two Super Bowls in his career, and the 49ers emphasized the position by handing out “over-paid” contracts to Javon Hargrave and Arik Armstead. The Seahawks now look to avoid the DT over-pay, at least for four years, by drafting Murphy instead of trading down or selecting an edge (Dallas Turner), a guard (Troy Fautanu), or a corner (Quinyon Mitchell) who had been projected in the top-15.
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On the other, I’m not surprised that the Seahawks picked Murphy, but I would have expected them to emphasize grabbing a true college football star had they been given the opportunity. Between Devon Witherspoon, Jaxon Smith-Njigba, and Kenneth Walker as recent examples, Seattle drafted players who were regularly cited as the best players on their teams; JSN only played one season at Ohio State, but he set receiving records at a school that has produced some of the top names at the position. To cite Murphy as the best defensive player on Texas would be fair and accurate, but it’s not like he was “Ndamukong Suh” or “Glenn Dorsey” to name a couple other undeniable college defensive tackle stars of the past. But there really weren’t any college defensive stars this year that I’m aware of and the record 23 offensive players picked in the first round is evidence of that.
I think if Murphy had a true top-10 grade that he would have been picked in the top-10 regardless of how desperate six of the first 12 teams were for a quarterback.
Instead of expecting Murphy to reach for Aaron Donald, or even Grady Jarrett, I’m more of the mind to be happy with him if he ends up as a replacement for Dre’Mont Jones. That would make Murphy a good starter long-term, if not having one or two great seasons in which he’s named to those lists (Pro Bowl) that get players recognition, which then gets them second houses and bad ideas to invest in a friend’s “great business idea”.
The Seattle Seahawks made the best prospect investment that they felt they could make with the 16th pick of this draft, regardless of position. Other players picked after Murphy could end up having better careers—odds say some of them will—but the Seahawks get the rocked-up interior disruptor that they’ve been searching for since John Schneider and Pete Carroll got to Seattle in 2010.
He may not fit the mold or break the mold, but with Mike Macdonald heavily invested in this pick and his development, Murphy is in a great position to carve his future into something we haven’t seen before and couldn’t predict right now.
