Seahawks visiting with QB prospect Davis Webb

So apparently measuring athletes at the combine looks a lot more interesting than I imagined. And now for who is in that photo and why we are talking about him on a Seahawks website.

According to Ian Rapoport’s source, Seattle is meeting with Cal quarterback Davis Webb on Wednesday. Rapoport calls Webb “a first round QB” but from what we’ve heard so far, he’s universally not mentioned as one of the top four QBs in this draft and many mocks up to this point don’t even have three QBs going in the first. (Todd McShay’s latest has zero QBs going in the first.)

The Seahawks drafting Webb would be interesting, nonetheless.

Pete Carroll and John Schneider’s interest no doubt lies within Webb’s athletic ability and physical profile: 6’5, 229 lbs, 4.79 40-yard dash, 33” vertical, 9’10 broad jump, 6.92 in the three cone drill. Webb was the fifth-fastest QB at the combine (faster than Deshaun Watson), had the third-best vertical, the fifth-best broad, the fourth-best three cone, and the third-best 20-yard short shuttle. Keep in mind that only about a dozen QBs participate in any given test, but still Webb has an intriguing combination of athleticism and college production.

If you choose to put stock into his college production.

Webb spent his first three years at Texas Tech before being benched in favor of true freshman Patrick Mahomes, one of the four quarterbacks who most list above him in this draft class. He transferred to Cal, and last season threw 37 touchdowns and 12 interceptions in Sonny Dykes’ spread “Bear Raid” offense. (Dykes was fired after the season.) Webb threw the ball a lot last season after replacing 2016 number one pick Jared Goff (another red flag), but averaged only 6.9 yards per attempt, and the majority of his throws (65%) come within 10 yards. The most accurate way to describe him as a prospect is as a project.

That does not sound like something the Seahawks, or any team, would draft in the first round in this class. So I do not see this meeting as a sign that Seattle might use the number 26 pick on him, or the conspiracy theory that it’s just to drum up interest in the QB and the pick for a team to trade up for him. Much like last year, there do not seem to be any quarterbacks worthy of a top five pick despite the hype being generated for some quarterbacks to be taken that high. (I did not really see the reason for interest in Goff or Carson Wentz, and still two teams traded a lot for those players.)

The San Francisco 49ers held a private workout with Webb, with some talk that they could be interested in him with their second round pick. I just think that if Webb is going that early, it means that he could be going ahead of Mahomes or Notre Dame’s Deshone Kizer. Or, if we’re being really honest, nobody has any clue what the F is going on with this QB class, or most of these positions. The order of the top four seems to be different for everyone, and some do believe that Webb will be better than all of them. I’m not going to be the guy who sits back and says that’s absolutely wrong, because only fools make declarations like that about unknown pro commodities. After all, Webb may not have a lot to stand on with his college stats, but he’s a gifted athlete and the potential is there for literally anything from an obvious bust in the beginning to skies the limit.

Similarly, I can’t say for sure that a team won’t trade up for him in the first or that the Seahawks aren’t doing this visit because they believe he might be available in the late third. I could definitely see Carroll being legitimately interested in him though; the team got pretty lucky that Russell Wilson didn’t miss any starts last season and the backup position is 100-percent up for grabs. They found Wilson in the third round and there’s no reason to believe they would pass on a QB on day two if they really felt he was a steal, so they could have a quality backup and a potential trade piece in the future.

Just the meeting itself is quite telling.