Ted’s Talk: Predicting Byron Murphy II’s rookie season

The Seattle Seahawks took advantage of a historical run on offensive players to “stick and pick” at No. 16 and select the top defensive player on their board, Byron Murphy II, a defensive tackle from the University of Texas. He’s a slightly undersized, explosive DT who wreaked havoc in his Junior season after finally becoming a full-time starter for the Longhorns.

Athletic Profile/Comps

Relative Athletic Score (RAS)

Mockdraftable

As you can see, Murphy gets dinged in the RAS for his lack of height and weight. His spider graph from Mockdraftable also shows a potentially concerning lack of length.

While those are certainly worth considering and discussing, everything else about Murphy’s athletic profile oozes explosiveness and elite traits. A 4.87 second forty at a cheeseburger shy of 300lbs? Sign me up!

Murphy’s RAS comparisons aren’t inspiring and the ones from Mockdraftable don’t look that great either except for Grady Jarrett. Turns out, there are others who see that comparison including Jim Nagy, the former Seahawks scout and current director of the Senior Bowl.

Kent Lee Platte, the originator of RAS has another pretty cool comparison for Murphy in the form a different undersized DT who was a member of the HOF All-2010s Team.

I mean, that would be pretty sweet. Geno Atkins pushed out more reps in the bench press and was 0.02 seconds faster in the 40, but Murphy had the better 10 and 20-yard splits. Atkins was also a bit better in the broad jump and agility scores. Other than that, it’s close enough to make a pretty good comparison.

Just for kicks, I wanted to check out a few other RAS comps for “undersized” DTs. And no, I won’t do THAT one for the recently-retired generational player. I’m looking for ones I haven’t seen yet.

Remember Chris Hovan? He’s a few inches taller and a bit heavier, but also very athletic apart from an okay vertical and poor broad jump. Hovan never made Pro Bowl or First-Team All-Pro, yet was a very good player in the middle of the Minnesota Vikings defense in the early 2000s alongside Future Seahawks Legends Kevin Williams and John Randle.

Speaking of John Randle, I really wish we had testing numbers for him because that would be a fun comparison to make. His size on Pro Football Reference is 6-1, 290lb…right in the range of Murphy.

Ok, let’s finish off the comps with a few other former Seahawks. I won’t expand on either of them, I just think they’re fun to look at.

Gut reaction to the pick

While I slightly preferred a trade down to get another Day 2 pick and still possibly get someone like Graham Barton or Johnny Newton, there’s not really a nit to pick with selecting Murphy.

The draft started with 14 offensive players taken in a row with the first defender coming off the board directly ahead of the Seahawks when the Indianapolis Colts drafted Laiatu Latu – a player that was potentially not even on Seattle’s draft board with his previous neck surgery. This scenario matches with the Devon Witherspoon and Jaxon Smith-Njigba picks from 2023 where John Schneider picked the first player at a position in the draft, quashing any discussion of whether they had another player at the position graded higher.

In fact, Schneider said that Byron Murphy was their highest rated defender in the entire draft.

With how the draft fell and Latu’s injury history, there’s not much of an argument that Schneider was feeding everyone a line of BS. The temptation was there to trade down but JS stood pat and took “his guy.”

Mike Macdonald had a hand in this too, no doubt. He wants to build a “run wall” and have a strong “spine” up the middle of the defense. Murphy will help that as he’s a force against both the pass and the run.

At the end of the day, I can’t complain too much about the pick. Seattle got bullied last season in the trenches and anything to reverse that trend is a big positive. An impact defensive tackle is worth his weight in gold, as evidenced by the ballooning salaries at the position. The best defensive tackles not only impact the play themselves, but they also make life easier on every level of the defense by keeping the linebackers clean and forcing quick throws which limits the amount of time that the secondary needs to cover. The upside of a top-level DT could change the fortunes of the entire defense more than possibly any other position.

Murphy is a potential blue-chip defender who could single-handedly blow up offensive game plans with his power and explosiveness. Schneider got his highest graded player halfway through the first round. Macdonald got a young, highly talented chess piece that could become a hurricane in the middle of his defense. That’s a win.

Rookie season prediction

Murphy enters into a deep defensive line room including 2023 trade deadline addition Leonard Williams, Jarran Reed, and Dre’Mont Jones, not to mention last year’s draft picks Cameron Young and Mike Morris. As a first-round pick, Murphy will feature heavily in the rotation that will move guys around to create mismatches – something that shouldn’t be too hard with the talent level. It’s exciting to think about the different rush combinations of Williams, Murphy, and Reed. Who do you want to double-team??

Macdonald got the best out of his defenders in Baltimore including Justin Madubuike who broke out in 2023 with 13.0 sacks and his first Pro-Bowl nod. Looking at RAS, it’s possibly the closest athletic comparison.

Since Murphy will be part of a rotation, however, he might not stuff the stat sheets as a rookie. The three guys he’s been most compared to – Grady Jarrett, Geno Atkins, and Justin Madubuike – all had slow starts to their careers with 1.0, 3.0, and 1.0 sacks respectively in their rookie seasons. I think Macdonald will get creative and give Murphy plenty of chances to make plays which he will take advantage of to the tune of 35 tackles, 3.0 sacks, and 6 TFL.

Even if Murphy doesn’t always make the play himself, he’ll be a consistent factor in the backfield and someone the opposing offenses will have to take into account. The fact that he’ll still split time with Leonard Williams, Jarran Reed, and others will keep the numbers down. It will still be a solid rookie season and he’ll show glimpses of why he was the second defensive player off the board.

Side note, I doubt the Seahawks will let him line up on offense like they did at Texas, but I sure hope so. Can we please let him have a big man TD??