Matt Gotel: From Lakes, to Snow, to West Florida, back home — and on Seahawks from tryout

Yeah, airfare sure is expensive these days.

Yet Matt Gotel may never buy a better plane ticket than the cross-country one he purchased on short notice last month. It got him more than 2,700 miles, from Florida, back home and into the NFL, with the Seahawks.

Two weeks before the draft, the 23-year-old Tacoma native was in Pensacola with his fiancee Sophia Molloy. They went to high school together at Lakes in Lakewood; she ran the mile on the Lancers’ track team. Gotel was training daily in Pensacola, around his college campus at the Division-II University of West Florida.

That’s when he found out the Seahawks were having a local tryout for prospects. It was two weeks before the draft. Those who could make their way to Seattle could take their long shot at making the team’s 90-man offseason roster.

“I flew here, on my own dollar,” Gotel said last weekend.

It’s more than a few dollars for a guy just out of college to go from Pensacola to Seattle. It was his first time home since Christmas a couple years ago.

His trip (way) north and west last month turned out to be a wise investment.

“I impressed some coaches out here,” Gotel said. “I got an invite back and got signed to come play for these guys.”

He was speaking after participating in the Seahawks’ rookie minicamp. Not as one of 27 tryout players. He’d already passed his tryout test. He is on Seattle’s 90-man offseason roster.

In the NFL — and especially in Seattle, which typically plays undrafted rookies as much as any team in the league — it’s not always how you get here.

It’s just that you are here.

Paths to the roster

There is a hierarchy to pre-draft and offseason opportunities in the NFL. Four tiers of entry, really.

Gotel made it through the bottom level.

The top-floor, front-door way is the incessantly hyped, covered and debated NFL draft. That’s how Mafe, Smith, seven other top Seahawks rookies and 253 more of the best prospects entered the league two weeks ago.

Before that nationally televised, three-day extravaganza each April, the league allows each team to host up to 30 prospects for pre-draft visits and evaluations at the club’s training facility.

This year, the Seahawks used many of those visits as much for the draft as to recruit for the second tier of rookie signings: undrafted free agents. Seattle signed 14 of those, beyond their nine draft choices. Carroll, general manager John Schneider and assistants visited with prospects at the Virginia Mason Athletic Center in Renton this spring. They starred the ones they liked most, but not enough to draft. They weighed the chances another team might draft them. Then they began calling those rookie free agents at the end of the draft.

Undrafted free agents sign for less money on non-guaranteed deals. They do not receive the four-year contract each draft pick gets per the league’s collective bargaining agreement.

The top bonus the Seahawks gave an undrafted free agent this spring reportedly went to Levi Lewis. The quarterback from Louisiana Lafayette signed after Seattle didn’t draft a QB (again). Lewis got $15,000 to sign. That indicates the 24-year-old rookie is likely to be the fourth quarterback in the Seahawks’ training camp that begins in late July, behind Drew Lock, Geno Smith and Jacob Eason.

The third entry tier is through tryouts each team gives players at its rookie minicamp, typically the weekend after the draft. Last week the Seahawks invited 27 undrafted, unsigned prospects to its rookie minicamp on a tryout basis. Some were bodies to fill out minicamp practices. As of Wednesday morning, the team had yet to sign any player that tried out at the minicamp to its 90-man offseason roster.

The bottom tier of rookie signings in the NFL contain the longest shots. Those are the guys who attend “local tryouts” each team hosts before the draft. Typically the Seahawks invite a couple dozen players to their local tryout before a draft. Maybe two or three get signed from it. A few more go onto an “emergency list” the team keeps in case of injuries and need during the preseason and season.

Gotel jumped above the “emergency list” and got signed from his local tryout with the Seahawks, last month.

The goal of local tryouts

What are Carroll and the Seahawks looking for in those local tryouts?

“We’re looking for something that sparks. We’ve got to see something,” Carroll said.

“I want to say this again, I said it before: When we ask these guys whether they’re going to run or not — this was the tryout, guys, and we were going to run 40 — and about a third of them raised their hand that they weren’t going to run. That’s not the signal that I’m looking for.

“So, we’re looking for anything that we can see that sparks us. And it could be quickness. It could be hops. It could be attitude. It could be whatever, competitiveness that we can figure out, and from the day, and there’s a lot of gut responses there, and evaluation being done, because you don’t have a whole lot to work with.”

With Gotel, they saw desire, size (6 feet 1 and 341 pounds) — and versatility.

He’d been through a bit to get back home.

Gotel came out of coach Dave Miller’s highly successful football program at Lakes in 2017. He went to Snow College. It’s a junior college of 5,100 students in the Sanpete Valley of central Utah, about 120 miles south of Salt Lake City.

“It was my only offer out of high school,” he said. “Didn’t make grades. JUCO was my route, and Snow College paid for my schooling. So that’s where I went.”

Two seasons later Darian Dulan, the defensive coordinator at West Florida, saw Gotel playing for Snow in a junior-college bowl game. He invited Gotel to visit the UWF campus in Pensacola, on the north shore of the Gulf of Mexico.

Gotel said he fell in love with the campus, the coaches, the entire West Florida vibe.

His first, junior season at UWF, Gotel was a defensive end and three-technique tackle. Then he put on weight and often was a nose tackle over the opposing center.

That’s what he was for most of Seattle’s rookie minicamp last weekend. But on Sunday he got some familiar work at his old three-technique tackle spot, on the outside shoulder of the opposing guard more outside toward the tackle.

A tackle in the 3-4

The Seahawks have been a 4-3 base defense for 12 years under Carroll. That’s often involved using three-technique tackles on early run downs.

This year, after a 2021 season in which Seattle finished 31st in total defense and out of the playoffs for only the second time in 10 years, Carroll’s schemes are becoming varied. New coordinator Clint Hurtt is promising to switch to a faster, multiple, 3-4 style. That’s with a single nose tackle over the center, two ends, plus outside linebackers such as Darryl Taylor speed rushing off the edges after quarterbacks.

Last weekend’s glimpse suggested the Seahawks like Gotel’s versatility as a potential nose tackle plus as a three-technique tackle closer to end.

Carroll wants to stockpile size inside to join veterans Al Woods, Poona Ford and Byran Mone, the returning tackles on Seattle’s defensive line. Ford and Mone, like Gotel, signed with Seattle as undrafted free agents.

“We need the big run-stopping guys, just like we have. We get the guys that fit perfectly, with Al and Poona and Mone. Those guys can really fill it up inside,” Carroll said. “That allows us to deploy them with inside backers, so that we can come off the edge with our edge guys — which really is...the biggest, clearest emphasis for us to adjust (to in 2022).”

Gotel’s reaction to all that?

Whatever.

He’ll play in the parking lot and drive the bus, if that’s what the Seahawks want.

“I just want to contribute — in any way I can,” Gotel said on the edge of Seattle’s indoor practice field following the last practice of rookie minicamp. “Whether that’s on the practice squad., on the 53-man roster, I just want to help this program, this club, win.”

No roster moves since the rookie minicamp means Gotel did enough to remain on Seattle’s 90-man offseason roster for now into organized team activities. Those practices will continue into June. He may have done enough to get a shot in training camp.

What did he learn on his first weekend as a Seahawk?

“So much, man,” he said. “Their culture, number one. That’s the number-one thing I loved about this. I learned their culture when I came here on the local visit, local workout.

“It’s an amazing culture here. It makes you want to do great things.”