Diving into the head coach’s previous hits to prep our brains for this year’s clue
During his tenure with the Seattle Seahawks, new Las Vegas Raiders head coach Pete Carroll became known for dropping hints on social media about who the Seahawks were going to select in the first round of the NFL Draft. Presumptively, Carroll will be doing the same with the Raiders’ round-one selection this year.
To get ahead and prepare our brains to crack the code, let’s look at a few of his previous hints and who Seattle ended up drafting that year.
Carroll tweeted a series of GIFs as hints in 2018. The two that stood out the most (to me at least) were one of ‘Frank the Tank’ or Will Ferrell’s character in the movie Old School and the other was a monkey stealing a hubcap from a car. The Seahawks ended up trading back and selecting San Diego State running back Rashaad Penny that year.
The connection I’m making there is drafting a running back in the first round is considered an “old school” approach in the analytical era, and Carroll viewed Penny as a “steal” since the former Aztec wasn’t getting a lot of first-round buzz at the time. Also, the fact the club was able to trade back and still get Penny was like stealing, in Carroll’s mind.
247Sports posted all of the draft hints/GIFs from that year for those interested in diving deeper.
To be honest, I’m not the best person to decipher the 2019 draft clues. I’m not very musically inclined and Carroll tweeted YouTube videos to a handful of Soul/R&B songs from the late 60s and 70s and drafted TCU defensive end L.J. Collier. Below is the full list of songs, courtesy of the Seahawks’ website, if anyone else can make the connection:
- What’s going on — Marvin Gaye
- You can’t hurry love — Diana Ross
- Easy — The Commodores
- Fingertips — Stevie Wonder
- A Natural Woman — Aretha Franklin
- I can’t help myself — The Four Tops
- Papa was a Rolling Stone — The Temptations
Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images
Someone actually cracked the code in 2020!
Carroll posted a clip from the movie 1917 where a soldier runs from one trench to another in the midst of a battle. “I like others think this may look like [Jonathan] Taylor from Wisconsin,” Seahawks fan Russell Massey wrote. “But after watching tape of Jordyn Brooks and how he weaves through the line to attack the opposing offenses and how fearless he plays I’m going that route.” Lo and behold, Brooks was Seattle’s first-round pick that year.
The Seahawks didn’t have a first-round pick and only made three selections overall in 2021. So Carroll didn’t drop any clues that year, opting to post a clip from Anchorman in reference to a previous first-round pick. Apparently, he’s a big Will Ferrell fan which makes sense given the USC connection.
In 2022, the head coach started laying the draft breadcrumbs by tweeting the song “Next Year” by Macklemore. Ahead of the draft, the Seahawks traded Russell Wilson to the Broncos. The implication here is that Carroll was preemptively telling the fanbase that they won’t be selecting a quarterback and would turn the reigns over to Geno Smith instead. That ended up being a good move as the quarterback class that year was headlined by Kenny Pickett, Desmond Ridder and Malik Willis.
Instead, Seattle took Mississippi State offensive tackle Charles Cross. If anyone knows a connection between Cross and the songs “New Rules” by Dua Lipa and “Beautiful” by Snoop Dogg, have at it.
Finally, Carroll made a bunch of different posts that seemingly had nothing to do with one another and had everyone stumped heading into the draft. However, Reddit user jimmyhoffasbrother connected all the posts to Reese Witherspoon, who shares the same last name as the Seahawks’ first pick in 2023, Devon Witherspoon.
Now we play the waiting game for Carroll to drop his 2025 draft hints, and we at least have something to go off of to make connections and try to crack the code! To be honest, I think there’s no chance anyone gets it right ahead of time using just the clues. But hey, prove me wrong and see if you can make some connections when the time comes!