After trade falls through, Seahawks choose formerly homeless Texas Tech LB Jordyn Brooks
Jordyn Brooks was home cooking pasta. A buddy told him his phone was ringing.
It was a call, and an area code, he wasn’t expecting.
“I was fixin’ something to eat,” Brooks said late Thursday night via a Zoom call from his Dallas-area home. “I was a little bit surprised it was the Seahawks. I wasn’t surprised about the first round. I was surprised the Seahawks came and got me.”
He’s not the only one.
General manager John Schneider and coach Pete Carroll did it again in the first round of the NFL draft. Not only did they use their original pick in round one for the first time in nine years—they used it at 27th overall on a linebacker most had going in either round two or three on Friday.
Brooks, a speedy linebacker and tackler, was an All-Big 12 linebacker at Texas Tech. He had 367 tackles in his career playing outside and in the middle for the Red Raiders last season. He had 19-tackle, three-sack game last fall to lead Tech over Oklahoma State.
“We had a trade to go back...a little bit,” Schneider said late Thursday on a Zoom call from his home and personal draft center in Newcastle, near the Seahawks’ closed headquarters in Renton.
“It fell through, at the very last minute.”
Schneider said the proposed deal to move down yet again was with Green Bay, the hometown team for which he worked before becoming Seattle’s first-time GM in 2010. But the Packers got a better offer from Miami to move up from 30. Green Bay jumped above the Seahawks and traded instead for the Dolphins’ pick at 26th overall. The Packers drafted quarterback Jordan Love minutes before Seattle, unexpectedly on the clock instead of traded back, picked Brooks.
Carroll and Schneider sounded like they would have taken him at 30 anyway, even if the Packers had made the trade with Seattle.
Brooks is the third linebacker Schneider and Carroll have picked in their last eight rounds of drafting. Most analysts saw Brooks as a second-day pick—not that Schneider and Carroll have ever conformed to most analysts.
About anything.
“Yeah, man, I’m excited,” Brooks said. “This is just a blessing from God.”
In ways most would never know.
Both Schneider and Carroll described Brooks and his family’s time being homeless. Brooks is the youngest of seven children. He has a twin sister.
“He talked about it was really hard. It was a hardship. It was something that was most memorable to him,” Carroll said. “They had to get through it, and find a way. He came across like they were able to handle it, they stuck together as a family. They figured it out and made it through it. And they were stronger for.
“It really felt like he has learned lessons along the way that have made him the kind of person that he is. ...
“We can’t say enough stuff about who this guy is...He comes from the right stuff.”
Schneider said Brooks’ mother of those seven children including twins, Lynn Brooks, “is a real rock.”
“She must be an incredible (woman). I’ve never met her. She must be very incredible.”
Brooks agrees with that.
Friday morning in a day-after interview with Seattle’s KIRO-AM radio, Brooks said his mom is the source of his personal grit that attracted the Seahawks to him.
“It’s the way she handled things,” Brooks told 710 ESPN. “We went through a lot as far as my childhood. We were in and out of homes, having to move, having to stay with family members, sleeping on the floor. ...
“I’m strong-minded, strong-willed.”
He sounds like Bruce Irvin.
Seattle made the outside linebacker as a surprise first-round pick in 2012, one round before they drafted Wagner for middle linebacker. Irvin later said, after winning a Super Bowl and playing in another for the Seahawks in the 2013 and ‘14 seasons, that while growing up in the Atlanta area briefly jailed and without a high-school degree he “was supposed to be dead or in jail.”
Irvin has earned $42 million in his career. He signed back with the Seahawks this month. He is now Brooks’ teammate and fellow linebacker in Seattle.
Brooks’ perseverance fits Carroll’s and Schneider’s quest to stock their Seahawks roster with players who are ultra-motivated to succeed, who have chips on their shoulders from extraordinary life experiences.
Carroll talked with Mrs. Brooks after he drafted her son and made his life dream come true.
“She was also very strong. She came across really strong,” Carroll said. “Promised me that he would bring his very best, give the program everything he had...
“It was really an excellent phone call.”
The COVID-19 outbreak and its canceling much if not all of the NFL’s offseason workouts and on-field training was also a factor in Seattle taking the impressively resilient Brooks.
“Our philosophy was trying to get players that, in the environment that we’re in, that can come in and act like pros right away,” Schneider said.
Brooks attributes on the field make him apparently destined for outside linebacker first in Seattle.
Brooks has run a 4.54-second 40-yard dash. At 6 feet and 240 pounds he has the size profile of Bobby Wagner. Seattle All-Pro middle linebacker has three years and $40 million left on his still-fresh contract.
Wagner’s former Utah State coaching staff moved to Texas Tech’s to coach Brooks.
“Bobby Wagner is someone I look up to, I put on a pedestal,” Brooks said.
That reverence was another attraction to Brooks, Carroll said.
The first call the coach got after he talked to Brooks and his mom: It was from Wagner. Carroll said the Seahawks’ star called to ask his coach for Brooks’ contact information, so he could welcome him to the team.
The Seahawks let strongside linebacker Mychal Kendricks remain unsigned in free agency. They have K.J. Wright, their weakside linebacker and longest-tenured player. Wright is entering the final year of his contract. Wright turns 31 in July.
Seattle drafted Ben Burr-Kirven, the former University of Washington middle linebacker, and outside backer Cody Barton in 2019. Barton has appeared to be the full-time strongside linebacker for 2020, at least until the team drafted Brooks.
Asked if Brooks could go right into Kendricks’ vacated strongside-linebacker job, Carroll said: “He could. He could play outside.”
Carroll said Brooks had “a lot of the same traits” as Kendricks.
Seahawks defensive coordinator Ken Norton Jr. is a former All-Pro and Super Bowl-winning linebacker. He was Seattle’s linebackers coach when Carroll and Schneider drafted Wagner and Wright last decade. Carroll trusts Norton to develop his linebackers explicitly in the Seahawks’ ways.
Carroll said the Seahawks did not enter the draft intending to add to linebacker right away. But when the trade fell through, he and Schneider agreed to take the best player they had on their board regardless of the relatively lesser need compared to pass rush, offensive tackle, cornerback and running back.
“It’s really a good situation,” at linebacker, Carroll said. “We aren’t worried about it, at all. This is just going to be something really fun to figure out.”
This story was originally published April 23, 2020 at 8:53 PM.
