THE CHEAP SEATS with STEVE CAMERON: Even after free agency and the draft, still questions for Seahawks at quarterback

It was a great question. 

For intense Seahawk fans, you might even suggest it remains the ONLY question. 

Mike Salk, co-host (with former UW and NFL quarterback Brock Huard) of a popular Seattle morning talk show, would not let Daniel Jeremiah of the NFL Network escape without tossing him the hand grenade. 

Yes, it had been wonderful running through a list of the Seahawks’ draft picks, and chatting about how much each might help the team. 

Yada, yada. 

Finally, though, Salk got down to business. 

“Do you think the Seahawks’ next franchise quarterback — and I’m talking about the next guy on this team who will win multiple playoff games and be considered a franchise quarterback, however you choose to define that — do you think they’re currently on this roster?” Salk asked. 

In other words, no matter what else the Seahawks have done to improve the roster, do they have the magic QB1 who can get them to the Super Bowl? 

And win it? 

Jeremiah reacted hesitantly, as though he had not been briefed on the questions he would need to field. 

He stopped and took a deep breath. 

ANSWER? 

“I think the fact that there’s my pause in there probably is not great in terms of confidence, but I think they can win playoff games with Sam Darnold,” Jeremiah said.  

“I do. I think Sam’s good enough to do that. I think they’ve put the right things in place around him.  

“I mean, I don’t think what he did last year was a fluke. I know the way it ended was not what anybody wanted to see. But I still think the ability is in there for him to do that.” 

Needless to say, that was an unsatisfying answer on a number of fronts. 

Meanwhile, the Hawks unloaded Geno Smith to the Raiders, a move that still needs to be judged. 

That left Darnold, who had been on a one-year contract, as low-hanging fruit for Seattle. 

Before free agency, before the draft, before Geno was traded, personnel analyst Trevor Sikkema of Pro Football Focus said bluntly: “Seattle can’t get a better quarterback than Geno Smith. 

“There’s no free agent better than Geno, nor can they find a reasonable trade possibility — and definitely no one in this draft class measures up.” 

In other words, Sikkema was suggesting flat-out that the later trade for Darnold, then grabbing Jalen Milroe as the 92nd pick in the draft, was not the direction he’d recommend.  

AH, YES. 

We hit the 2025 draft, and the arrival of an exciting, mega-athlete from Alabama. 

I’m sure Salk had Milroe on his mind when he asked Jeremiah about the Hawks having a franchise quarterback on the roster. 

Milroe has a cannon arm, but the knock has been that his throwing motion is out of whack. 

However, some of the league’s elite quarterbacks arrived with similar problems, and learned on the fly. 

Josh Allen. Lamar Jackson. Super Bowl champ Jalen Hurts. 

On that same show that produced Salk’s question to Jeremiah, co-host Huard (an actual NFL quarterback and current analyst), explained that he thought Milroe’s mechanics could be fixed. 

“The positive is it is a short, quick release stroke,” Huard said after the Seahawks’ two-day rookie minicamp. 

It’s not a long, looping delivery that has to be scrapped entirely. 

Huard thinks the challenge will be syncing up Milroe’s upper and lower body when he throws — and the upper is already clean. 

Almost everyone who has scouted Milroe believes he can be a weapon in the NFL almost immediately, running red-zone options and so forth. 

But as an everyday quarterback, and maybe a great one? 

It can only come with time. 

So, Salk is not going to get any immediate satisfaction from his question. 

Neither are we. 

“I shy away from quarterbacks with so much assembly required,” Jeremiah said. 

“Also, I’ve always talked about the confetti test: Do you have a quarterback on your roster that you can imagine the confetti falling on him?” Jeremiah said.  

“I don’t know that they have that guy.” 

Oh. 

Umm. 

Best case: We can hope he’s wrong. 

Email: [email protected] 

Steve Cameron’s “Cheap Seats” columns appear in The Press three times each week, normally Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday unless, you know, stuff happens. 

Steve suggests you take his opinions in the spirit of a Jimmy Buffett song: “Breathe In, Breathe Out, Move On.”