“We’re trying to figure out how to whip the other guys, get better information, more intel and all that.” — Pete Carroll on preparation for the virtual draft
As the NFL gets ready for what Pete Carroll called “a one-time-only situation” and “really unique” virtual draft, this is an opportunity for the Seahawks to show they are still one of the league’s most tech-savvy franchises by taking advantage of less-prepared franchises.
The Seahawks have been a pretty bad drafting team since 2013, but John Schneider has an experienced personnel crew, established connections around football and a franchise that became cutting edge under the late Paul Allen. That all should help the Hawks where other teams might fail in this virtual format.
“It’s the wild, wild West a little bit,” Carroll recently told SiriusXM NFL Radio. “We’ve all got guidelines and rules and everything, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t ways in there that you can’t figure out how you can get what you need to get. Johnny is prepared knowing that he’s not going to have as much as normal and they won’t have the normal process that he would have. But we’re going to try and max that out in every way we can.”
Continue reading How Hawks are handling ‘wild, wild West’ draft
John Schneider had around $35 million in 2020 salary cap space to spend on free agents when the league year began, and everyone expected a chunk of that to go toward a pass rusher on a long-term deal.
Clearly, the return of sports is not significant in the face of a deadly pandemic that requires us to cease our normal lives in order to keep each other healthy. But the return of sports will be important because it will signal the re-normalization of society and thus the presumed passing of the coronavirus.