‘This is my year’: Lake HS’ Matt Gotel, in 3rd Seahawks camp, seizing best NFL chance yet

Matt Gotel’s best move yet?

Bending to one knee.

It wasn’t some new move the defensive tackle made on the Seahawks practice field, to do his job his team needs him to do so much: Stop the run.

It was at the Kubota Garden in Seattle, in March. On the park’s signature, picturesque Moon Bridge, the 345-pound defensive tackle bent down and asked his long time love from their Lakes High School to marry him.

Sophie Molloy said yes.

“I got engaged,” Gotel told The News Tribune with a huge, proud smile at training camp in the Seahawks’ Virginia Mason Athletic Center.

“Yeah, man. I’ve been with her for seven years now. It was time to pull the trigger.”

Molloy was a miler on the Lakes Lancers’ track team while Gotel played football for legendary Lakes coach Dave Miller, the same high school program that produced former Washington Huskies and Seahawks wide receiver Jermaine Kearse.

Sophie was with Matt in Pensacola, Florida, in the spring of 2022, just after her man played his final college football season there for Division-II West Florida.

Gotel had made his way from his football start a Steilacoom Bulldogs youth football team, to the Little Lancers youth team in Lakewood, to the Lakes High Class of 2017, to Snow Junior College in Utah, to West Florida through 2022.

“They made me feel like I was special there (at UWF),” he said.

“I was all-conference both years I was there. Then COVID hit. I decided not to enter the draft and play my last year (of extra, COVID-year eligibility) there. And (scouts from) Seattle came to my practice one day (in Pensacola) and was like, ‘Hey, man, aren’t you from Tacoma?’”

After the season, Gotel answered the Seahawks’ invitation to a local tryout in Renton. Then-coach Pete Carroll had come to Gotel’s Pro Day in Pensacola that spring.

“That’s when I really thought, ‘I might be a Seahawk,’” he said in this training camp with his hometown team.

If you can’t tell by now, it wasn’t an easy path here for Gotel.

Carroll and the Seahawks invited him to earn a place on Seattle’s 90-man roster in the preseason two years ago. In a tryout.

“They let me know like, ‘Hey, man, we really want you to come.’ I was like, I’m a broke college kid, right?” Gotel said. “Let’s grab some money together. And I worked in a 9-to-5 during the draft process. I was a YMCA manager. That was my job.

“But yeah, I was just trying to get my money together. And I was like, ‘Man, I gotta get on this flight. I know if I get there. I’m gonna get my opportunity.’ So that’s why I took it.

“Paid my own way.”

He bought a round-trip ticket from Pensacola to Seattle. On four days’ notice.

That’s not cheap. On check Monday night by The News Tribune of Pensacola-to-Seattle round trips four days away: The cheapest was $895.

“Oh, no. Pensacola to Seattle,” Gotel said of getting to that Seahawks tryout. “I definitely had to break the credit card out.”

For two seasons, he went on and off and back on the Seahawks’ practice squads and preseason rosters. He signed twice and was released twice in short order by the Atlanta Falcons. He played in the XFL in the spring of 2023, with the San Antonio Brahmas.

But now, Gotel has his best chance yet to make his hometown NFL team out of training camp this month. He and newly signed, 32-year-old veteran Johnathan Hankins are the only huge, true nose tackles on a run defense that needs them. Seattle ranked 31st in the NFL against the run last season, which subverted Pro Bowl quarterback Geno Smith, the offense and the entire Seahawks’ non-playoff season.

It got the 72-year-old Carroll fired. It got former Baltimore Ravens defensive coordinator Mike Macdonald the Seahawks’ job in January, as the NFL’s youngest head coach at age 37.

And it got Gotel this chance of his football life, with an all-new coaching staff.

Put another way: The Seahawks finished next to last in the league in run defense without Gotel in it.

He’s yet to play in an NFL regular-season game.

“Hey, this is my year,” the newly engaged Gotel said.

He meant in more ways than one.

“This defense fits me so well.”

Matt Gotel’s place on Seahawks

Defensive tackle Jarran Reed is playing three technique, between offensive tackles and guards, even out as a five technique more like an end.

End Leonard Williams says he is learning not two or three but six(!) different positions in Macdonald’s new Seahawks defense.

Gotel? He and Hankins, at 335 pounds 10 pounds lighter, barely move off the opposition’s center.

“Me and him are, like, true noses,” Gotel said. “We aren’t going to slouch to that three tech very much often. We aren’t going to see any third downs (as pass rushers).

“We’re going to stop the run, first and second downs.”

When the Seahawks had the NFL’s best defenses 10 years ago, going to Super Bowls, they rotated 10 effective defensive linemen into games by the middle of the first quarter. This year’s team is nowhere near that deep on the D-line. Gotel has 345 pounds of strength and speed to help.

He just doesn’t have the NFL game experience. Yet no matter who the coach has been, general manager John Schneider and his Seahawks personnel staff have kept inviting Gotel back, for three springs into summers now.

Asked what impression he thinks he’s made on the Seahawks from 2022 and ‘23, Gotel said: “I mean, I feel like I’m a reliable guy. You know, that goes a long way for me.

“And I mean, this time that it’s probably given me a rope this time, you know? ‘We want to stop the run.’ You know, I’m 340 pounds, who’s, you know, me and Jonathan Hankins.

“So, you know, it’s gonna be a good look for the season.”

A third nose tackle, Cameron Young, a Seahawks draft choice last year, remains on the physically-unable-to-perform list with an injury. That has pushed Gotel to this prime chance.

Gotel’s next shot to impress the Seahawks at a position they are so needy is Saturday. He will play in the first preseason game, Seattle at the Los Angeles Chargers (4:05 p.m., channel 16).

Then next week, Seahawks coaches will be closely watching how Gotel performs in the team’s joint practices with the Titans over two days in Nashville. Those are Aug. 14 and 15, leading into Seattle’s second preseason game at Tennessee Aug. 17.

How’s Macdonald viewing Gotel, his play and chances to finally stick with the Seahawks this month?

“Big, strong, eager, great attitude,” Seattle’s coach said. “There’s things that we’re working on with him, and he knows those things.

“But he’s right there. He’s competing. Where we’re at D-line-wise and how he allocated reps and things like that, he’s got a great opportunity ahead of him to make a name for himself. Especially in preseason, when we practice against the Titans, he’ll have ample opportunity to go out there and make some plays.

“But I think we felt him (lately) in the run-fit period,” Macdonald said.

“It will be fun to watch the film and see how he’s improved.”