Michael Penix Jr. draft rumors bring sleeper into play for Washington QB

After restructuring the contract of veteran quarterback Geno Smith earlier this offseason, the Seattle Seahawks left us with more questions than answers about his 2024 playing status and beyond.

The Seahawks have been deemed a sneaky candidate to select a signal-caller in Round 1 of the upcoming draft by many, and former Tampa Bay Buccaneers general manager and current NFL analyst for SiriusXM Radio Mark Dominik only added fuel to the proverbial fire during a podcast appearance on Brock and Salk of Seattle Sports on Tuesday.

Seahawks lurking in the shadows as sleeper team for QB Michael Penix Jr.

"I think you guys [Seahawks] are big-time sleepers at the quarterback spot," Dominik stated. "I think they're the sleeper team that's just being quiet and maybe makes a move," he adds.

Dominik uses his experiences with the Bucs to put why Seattle may feel inclined to take a stab at Penix into perspective.

"When I was in Tampa, we drafted a young quarterback named Josh Freeman, who was supremely talented on the field... But even though I had a young quarterback who had great numbers his second year, I still had to beat (fellow NFC South quarterbacks) Drew Brees, Cam Newton, and Matt Ryan, right? And so I realized that I still have probably the fourth-best quarterback in our division, and that’s really brutal."

While it is no knock on Smith, Dominik points out how the Seahawks could be in the same boat: “It doesn’t mean anything against Geno [Smith]... “It’s just the fact that, ‘Hey, look, we might have the fourth-best quarterback in this division, and we’ve got to swing at it,’" he described. 

The uncertainty surrounding the long-term prospects of Smith could be enough to prompt the Seahawks to spend the No. 16 overall selection on a young quarterback, and they have reportedly scoped out a potential successor earlier in the evaluation process, albeit not Penix (Bo Nix of Oregon). But the Washington product can continue playing in the same state should he wind up in Seattle.