NFL draft

Will Schneider make the right choice at 16?

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As John Schneider gets ready to run his first draft without Pete Carroll at his side, plenty of fans think everything is suddenly going to change – because of course Carroll was pulling all of the strings and was the reason the Seahawks were in the bottom third of the league in drafting success over the last decade.

Schneider debunked that idea earlier this month on his radio show, confirming Carroll had the power to “put his foot down” but he “rarely, rarely, rarely did that.”

“John was in control on draft day and will continue to be,” said Nolan Teasley, Seattle’s assistant GM. “The process stays consistent, so I don’t foresee a lot of change in that regard.”

That’s bad news for fans who thought Carroll was running the draft show all these years. Schneider has been pretty subpar at drafting ever since the historic 2010-12 run. According to a 2022 ESPN study, the Seahawks ranked first in the league in draft value since 2012.

But, if you take out that 2012 draft that netted Russell Wilson and Bobby Wagner and start with 2013, the Hawks ranked just 21st in the league. The last 11 drafts have been middling or worse: The 2013 draft ranked in the bottom 11, the 2014 draft bottom eight, and the 2017 and 2019 drafts were not good either (DK Metcalf notwithstanding).

The last two draft classes have featured some high picks thanks to the Wilson trade, and now Schneider is picking 16th – which puts him in a prime spot to get a true first-round talent for a third straight year.

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Franchise history, NFL draft

Will Schneider draft a guard who can start as a rookie?

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John Schneider could have afforded a top free-agent guard, but it’s a position he thinks is overpaid – and now he absolutely has to draft a guy who is capable of pushing for a starting spot as a rookie.

Seemingly 90% of mock drafts have him doing exactly that with the 16th pick, taking Washington star Troy Fautanu. Mike Macdonald wants to be “a physical football team” and Fautanu certainly would help that happen.

But Schneider also thinks guards “get overdrafted,” and he recently signed former Jets starter Laken Tomlinson. So, unless Macdonald and Ryan Grubb (Fautanu’s OC at UW) really want Schneider to take Fautanu – and the lineman is there at 16 – it sure looks like Schneider will be angling to grab a guard later in the draft.

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Coaches, State of the team

Players: Macdonald and ‘right coaches’ bring ‘urgency’

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Amid the hullabaloo by some overly nostalgic fans about Mike Macdonald’s rearranging of the VMAC, his players seem to get it. They know Pete Carroll’s missing hoop and the temporarily blank walls are a metaphor for a clean slate, a new beginning.

They also know the expectations are much higher now and being delivered in a more defined, exacting way than Carroll and his staff were doing over the last few years.

It’s all as it should be, and the smart ones – players and fans – understand that. The players who don’t won’t be around very long. And that’s as it should be, too.

The core leaders of this defense – Leonard Williams, Uchenna Nwosu and Julian Love – sound bought in.

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Franchise history, NFL draft

History says Schneider should stick and pick

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The draft is next week, and John Schneider and his Seahawks have to figure out one big thing: Where are the ledges?

It’s the key to anything Schneider will do in this selection meeting. And he needs to tread carefully, lest he fall off the cliff again.

Schneider has not made a draft-day deal involving a first-round pick since 2019, but he will be tempted to do it this time after sending his second-rounder to the Giants for Leonard Williams and a third-rounder in the deal to get Sam Howell from Washington.

At 16, Schneider is sitting right in the crosshairs — and he knows it.

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Coaches, Free agency, The roster

Macdonald: ‘We want to set the standard in Seattle’

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In Pete Carroll’s last
season in Seattle, his
platitudes and vague
descriptors about what needed to be fixed on the defense had worn super thin and it was so obvious that he really had no idea how he was going to fix the weakest part of his team after years of failing.

That’s why it is so refreshing to hear Mike Macdonald
quietly but confidently talk about how elite his defense is going to be. He outlines it so clearly that you can just see it happening — and not taking long either.

Whether he is talking about how expectations lead to Super Bowl wins, about his motto of Chasing Edges or about “building a wall up the middle” of his defense, he sounds assured that all of these things will happen.

His resume supports his words, which is why he evokes such confidence from so much of the fan base – a huge turnaround from the last couple years of the fading Carroll era.

Here are some of the encouraging things Macdonald said at the NFL owners meetings in Orlando this week, as reported by Michael-Shawn Dugar of The Athletic and John Boyle of Seahawks.com.

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Free agency, The roster

The roster so far: ‘So much work still to do’

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“We’re trying to obviously get big up front and get really strong down the middle of our defense and then try to build from there.” – John Schneider on Seattle Sports 710

The Seahawks entered the offseason needing to fill six positions before they got to the draft. They have gone 5 for 6, re-signing Leonard Williams and Noah Fant, trading for Sam Howell and swapping out their linebackers and safeties.

Player for player, they made these swaps:

They also retained Michael Jackson, Darrell Taylor, Artie Burns, Jon Rhattigan and Myles Adams (ERFA). They brought back former UDFA George Fant, who will start at right tackle if Abe Lucas can’t and will play sixth man/super tight end and swing tackle if Lucas is healthy. They also added another backup guard, Tremayne Anchrum Jr.

They still have no left guard as John Schneider notably continues to avoid spending any money on interior linemen, but they otherwise have addressed all of their needs.

As Mike Macdonald told NFL Network at the league meetings in Orlando, “We have a plan in place, but you’re just trying to do your best day by day and stack days. And now we look back five or six weeks, I feel like we’ve made a lot of progress. But there’s just so much work still to do.”

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Free agency, NFL draft, The roster

March Madness: Schneider never invests much in O-line

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“Guys get overdrafted at (guard) and, in my opinion, they get overpaid.” – John Schneider on Seattle Sports 710

The NCAA tournament begins this week, and Seahawks fans are enduring their annual March madness over John Schneider’s disinterest in building a strong offensive line.

Schneider just doesn’t like to spend on the unit. In eight of the last 10 years, the Hawks have ranked 26th or worse in money paid along the line, according to OverTheCap. This year, just like 2016, the Seahawks have the cheapest offensive line in the NFL. And it very likely will remain that way.

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The roster, Trades

Is Howell a trade for Hasselbeck — or for Whitehurst?

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As fans across social media debate the Sam Howell trade, perhaps the best way to frame the discussion is thus: Did the Seahawks just trade for Matt Hasselbeck or did they trade for Charlie Whitehurst?

In other words, did they add a potential franchise passer or a second-tier backup? Or maybe something in between?

A few weeks ago, we set the table for the transition from holdover quarterback Geno Smith to a new QB who becomes Mike Macdonald’s guy. In that post, we retraced how Mike Holmgren landed Hasselbeck in Year 3 (2001) and how John Schneider took a swing on Whitehurst in his first year (2010), missed and didn’t get his QB until Year 3 either.

Hasselbeck turned into a franchise savior while Whitehurst was merely Clipboard Jesus. Which might Howell be?

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Contracts, Free agency

Hawks used over $35M in cap space and don’t look any better

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By the end of the first day of the new league year, the Seahawks had used over $35 million in salary cap space to address four of their six positional needs – and they still didn’t look like they had improved their roster.

After free agents flew off the shelves in the first two days, we thought John Schneider might be preparing to make a trade to improve his roster. Instead, he stuck to his typical MO and overpaid role players who gradually ate up almost all of Seattle’s cap space.

There certainly were good moves. The Hawks accomplished their top priority: keeping Leonard Williams. They also kept their starting tight end, Noah Fant; found a safety, Rayshawn Jenkins, to start opposite Julian Love; and added insurance at right tackle by bringing back George Fant.

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Contracts, Franchise history, Free agency

Will Williams be a rare trade extension win for Schneider?

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John Schneider has not been very lucky with a lot of his big trade acquisitions, but he is betting – as he had to – that Leonard Williams will become the second successful extension out of the five he has made since 2010.

The Seahawks sent a 2024 second-round pick and 2025 fifth-rounder to the New York Giants for Williams last October, and they managed to re-sign him on Monday to a three-year deal worth $64.5 million.

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