Seattle Seahawks must avoid taking this quarterback anywhere in the 2024 NFL draft

How long do the Seattle Seahawks want Geno Smith to remain as QB1 with the team? No one unaffiliated with the organization knows the answer to that. We can make guesses about that but general manager (and now President of Football Operations) John Schneider keeps everything hush hush so much so that we didn't know for sure who Seattle was even interviewing for most of their assistant coaches.

We can also guess that Seattle will take a quarterback somewhere in the 2024 NFL draft. We could be somewhat surprised and the team takes one in the first round. More likely, and more needed, Seattle should take a defensive lineman, linebacker, or interior offensive lineman first. Love Geno Smith or dislike him as a player, he has not been the problem in Seattle the last two years.

But new head coach Mike Macdonald might want a younger quarterback to take over for Smith as Macdonald begins his journey as Seattle's head coach. That might mean 2024 is a bit unpleasant at times as most rookies struggle a bit, but possibly Macdonald sees someone like J.J. McCarthy as a fit for the Seahawks and Macdonald coached at Michigan in 2021 while McCarthy was already the starting quarterback.

Seattle Seahawks need to avoid taking Joe Milton in the 2024 NFL draft

But one player Seattle should avoid is Tennessee quarterback Joe Milton. One will need to ignore watching Milton doing drills in pregame warmups. Can he throw a football 70 yards with relative ease? Yes, he can. Milton is also big enough - 6'5" and 235 pounds - to resemble Cam Newton or Anthony Richardson. Milton has very raw skills, but there is also a lot that he lacks and seems incapable of correcting.

For one, he has very little touch on his passes. In 2021, Milton started the season at Tennessee as QB1 but after overthrowing open receivers deep many times (when just a little air under the ball would have worked wonders) Milton was replaced by Hendon Hooker and Milton sat and watched Hooker for most of the next two seasons. Hooker also ran the offense much better and that is key.

A quarterback who has the ability to throw with the length and velocity that Milton does while also being big enough to run over would-be tacklers at times is extremely intriguing. But Milton simply does not make good decisions from play to play. Ignore the number of turnovers he has, which are not much, he often does not make the right read on his throws or is indecisive when to keep the ball and run. Plus, Milton statistics - not bad but not great - with the Vols is greatly due to head coach Josh Heupel's fantastic system.

There were times during the season that Tennessee's offense greatly struggled such as the 7 points they scored against Missouri and even the 30 they scored against Austin Peay. A lot of the inefficiency was due to Milton's decision-making. When Tennessee coolly scored 35 points in their bowl game against Iowa, a top-five defense last year, they partly did so because Milton chose not to play and the Vols started true freshman QB Nico Iamaleava instead and Iamaleava made the correct reads and ran the offense as it was meant to be run.

Milton is a bright person. He started his career at Michigan and one has to be smarter than I am (which may not be saying all that much, admittedly) to get into the school. He is also seemingly a nice person with an effervescent smile. But he likely will not be a good NFL quarterback because he does not consistently make good decisions even though he can throw the ball 70 yards.

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