After a strong run of drafts from 2010-2012 that helped build the Seahawks into a Super Bowl champion in 2013, Seattle has been far less effective in finding top-tier talent in the NFL Draft over the last several seasons. With the team undergoing significant changes to their roster and coaching staff this offseason, the way they handled the draft process has been overhauled as well.
G.M. John Schneider and head coach Pete Carroll said on Monday that the team has reduced the number of players that will make their final draft board as they look to weed out a greater number of prospects they view as problematic.
“You evaluate your drafts all the time. You’re constantly evaluating what you think you did well, what you need to improve on. I think one of the things we’ve done is it’s really cleaned up. We don’t have quite as many names on our board,” Schneider said. “You have to have certain criteria to be on our board and we’re making less excuses for players, I would say.”
The fact this re-evaluation comes the year after their top draft pick, defensive tackle Malik McDowell, was injured in an ATV accident before training camp shouldn’t come as a shock. McDowell didn’t play or practice once for Seattle last year after the injury and his football future remains in serious doubt.
“We haven’t had a good update in a long time,” Carroll said of McDowell.
Whether it’s been taking some risks on players with character concerns, injury concerns or other issues, the Seahawks have not gotten the return on investment from their draft choices over the last several years they would have liked. Frank Clark, Tyler Lockett, Justin Britt, Luke Willson and others have become quality starters and contributors and the jury is still out on some players from last year’s class, but they haven’t been hitting at nearly the same rate they did early on in their tenure. That led to a refining of the process.
“At some point, the character stuff, there’s red flags usually on everybody but what happens is you end up kind of ignoring some of those red flags if you feel like you have a specific need or a fit for a player. I think it’s happened in the past, it will probably happen in the future but you just want to limit those,” Schneider said.
