This is pretty much the same reason I made that "trade - phone call" thread a couple weeks ago. There might have been some opportunity out there, particularly with the Eagles, to add a pass rusher to this roster as insurance for Bruce Irvin. Much of the season is still ahead of us, but we are more than 1 game in. We've had 4 preseason games of Irvin to look at and lots of TC reports. The expectation was that Irvin probably would struggle in 2012, but there was hope that he could be an Aldon Smith/Von Miller story. So far, it appears very likely that he's going to be the former, not the latter. And that's a problem, because Seattle has banked on Irvin to be the latter- as evidenced by how they provided no competition whatsoever for the Raheem Brock role.
Seattle said that pass rush was their top priority during the offseason. They repeated this over and over. Before and after the draft, Carroll talked about finding his Von Miller. Seattle had chances to sign or trade for other pass rushers and didn't. I look at that body of evidence, and I think it's pretty clear that they didn't plan on Irvin waiting until year 4 to start contributing.
I say this as a huge pre-draft fan of Irvin's, and a huge fan of this FO, but I think that calculation was a big gamble, and it already looks like it is a gamble they will lose. Irvin has special talent as a pass rusher, but he might be even more raw than project-passrusher-posterchild JPP was in terms shedding blocks. In TC, he was getting stonewalled by Alex Barron. In the preseason, he was a total non-factor until the final (and most meaningless) preseason game, a game against Oakland, who is terrible and wasn't even really trying in that game. Now we've seen him be a non-factor against AZ, who had a terrible and injury depleted line and a terrible QB.
Does this mean Irvin will bust? Of course not. Does this mean that we can definitively say that Irvin will not be Von Miller right away? No, we can't even say that, because stranger things have happened. Can we say that it's looking doubtful that he'll be Von Miller? Yeah, that's probably safe to say at this point, as early as it is. He looks years away from being a complete pass rusher right now.
Can Seattle afford for Irvin to be a project? No, not really. As said above, Carroll's language and expectations were that the pass rush was a major problem- a top priority. It's not something he hopes is fixed in a few years- it's something he wants fixed NOW. It's hard to criticize Carroll though. He had no real shot at Mario Williams in FA. Cliff Avril was franchised. And who knows, maybe John Schneider did make some phone calls around the 53 cut down looking for pass rush help. I'd be a little surprised if he didn't. My only complaint was that Seattle passed on Vinny Curry in round 2, who looks an awful lot like Chris Clemons jr. on tape (fittingly, he went to the Eagles). But Seattle needed a fast MLB, and they had the 3rd rounder reserved for Wilson, so it is what it is.
If this problem continues all season, I hope people realize that we might see two offseasons in a row where pass rush is the top priority. Carroll won't rest until this issue is fixed. As a defensive mind, and as a former DB, he appreciates pass rush more than most. Irvin has a ton of ability, but I think we might have to wait a painfully long amount of time before he cashes in on it.