Witherspoon vs. Carter, from NFL draft debate to DROY race - ESPN

SEATTLE — The night before the first round of the 2023 NFL draft, Pete Carroll had a hankering, and then a hunch.

On his way to Popeyes, the Seattle Seahawks head coach stopped at a red light near the fast food restaurant and saw an Illinois license plate on a car in front of him. Funny, Carroll thought, because he had just been thinking about Illini cornerback Devon Witherspoon, who along with Alabama outside linebacker Will Anderson Jr. was one of the two highest-rated defenders on the Seahawks' draft board.

Seattle is 1,900 miles away from Illinois' western border, so you can imagine Carroll's surprise when he pulled into the drive-thru and found himself right behind another car with an Illinois plate.

«I thought, 'Whoa, what kind of sign is that?'» Carroll told Seattle's Sports Radio 93.3 KJR-FM. "… The fact that it all came through, what the heck, all those mock drafts, all those times, I should've just looked at the cars in front of me. I would've figured it out."

Few mock drafts, if any, predicted Seattle would take Witherspoon with the fifth pick. Many had the Seahawks going with quarterbacks Anthony Richardson or Will Levis. Others had them taking defensive end Tyree Wilson.

But perhaps the player most commonly mocked to Seattle at No. 5 was Jalen Carter, the All-American defensive tackle out of Georgia who would have filled by far the biggest hole on the Seahawks' roster. And to some, he was exactly the kind of game-wrecking interior defender Seattle had been trying to find for years, a search that continued in October when it traded a second-round pick for Leonard Williams.

But the Seahawks had concerns about Carter, who pleaded no contest to misdemeanor charges of reckless driving and racing in March after