From 2010 through 2012, the Seattle Seahawks’ draft classes were the envy of the NFL. No other team had a similar knack for collecting talent, especially in the later rounds. The team that won Super Bowl XLVIII, and nearly won Super Bowl XLIX, was created to a large degree by picks outside of the first round. Kam Chancellor, K.J. Wright, Richard Sherman, Bobby Wagner, Russell Wilson… it was incredible how well head coach Pete Carroll, general manager John Schneider, and Seattle’s scouting staff was able to hit big on undervalued prospects.
But from 2013 through 2021 — a very long stretch for this to happen — Seattle switched its preferences from undervalued prospects to overvalued assets. Perhaps assuming that they had the major positions in the bag, and it was time for luxury picks, the Seahawks traded a lot of their first-round picks away, and they were awful at picking talent with those picks when they had them. Germain Ifedi, Rashaad Penny, L.J. Collier, Jordyn Brooks… these players were not first-round talents, the Seahawks clearly though they were, and the disconnect showed on the field, as it tends to do.
Moreover, Seattle was striking out on the late-round picks that used to work. There was the occasional hit like Tyler Lockett, Jarran Reed, and D.K. Metcalf outside of the first round, but whatever allowed Carroll and Schneider to see beyond into the third day before was officially out the door.
After a 7-10 season in 2021 — Seattle’s first losing campaign since 2011 — Carroll and Schneider met with team ownership and vowed to get things right. No longer would they overpay for boutique players who piqued their interest — now, the prospects had to fit what the Seahawks wanted to do.
The return to form has been unbelievable so far, and it may lead to this group’s most impressive draft class to date. Five of Seattle’s nine drafted players this year — left tackle Charles Cross, right tackle Abe Lucas, running back Kenneth Walker III, and cornerbacks Coby Bryant and Tariq Woolen — have all exploded onto the scene.
Being watched may have helped.
After that 7-10 season, Carroll and Schneider met with team owner Jody Allen. In previous years, those meetings were with Jody Allen and previously Paul Allen, the Microsoft co-founder who bought the team in 1997, and the franchise passed to his sister upon his death in 2018. Meetings between head coach, general manager, and owner had been mostly congratulatory at best, and “stay the course” at worst, as Carroll and Schneider had built enough equity to walk through all those specious personnel decisions and subsequent non-Super Bowl seasons to get back to work.
But in 2022, the talent drain presented a different view. If Carroll and Schneider wanted to stay the course, so to speak, they would have to do so under a different paradigm.
Was told the below last night. The meeting has been over.
Again, told repeatedly Carroll, Schneider, Allen saw this as a normal, end-of-year deal & presenting her a sketch plan for 2022.
Seahawks for last 12 yrs don’t hold a press conference or make anything official off that https://t.co/Dm3CBMU8Jx
— Gregg Bell (@gbellseattle) January 15, 2022
Allen wasn’t calling the shots in a Jerry Jones or Dan Snyder sense — it could better be said that she was involved in the draft as an overall steward. Perhaps this was to help keep Carroll and Schneider away from their own more impulsive tendencies, and on the track of picking the best available players, as opposed to getting cute and seeing how much smarter than the rest of the NFL they were.
“This is another chat we had with her,” Carroll said of Allen as the draft wrapped up. “She was great and she had fun. She was in it. She was competing and she wanted to know about who you maybe trading for, and the whole thing, she was on it. So she’s really amazing.”
True competition is back in the building.
Carroll’s “Always Compete” mantra worked exceedingly well in the early years of his and Schneider’s plans, when the Seahawks were almost completely bereft of talent, thanks to former general manager Tim Ruskell. But after Carroll and Schneider got the team back over the top, there appeared to be an arrogance in personnel development that took hold of the thing. The Seahawks were making bad decisions, and doubling down on those bad decisions, and that affected everything from a horrible offensive line under Tom Cable’s unquestioned leadership, to a historically great defense that started to feel the regression when the replacements for the stars of the Legion of Boom weren’t a patch on the originals.
True competition was out the window, in favor of covering one’s posterior. And that never works. Coming into this draft, both Carroll and Schneider seemed to have the same underdog mentality they had in the early parts of the previous decade. Perhaps that better allowed them to identify the underdogs with similar chips on their shoulders that had been the hallmark of their personnel strategy back then.
“It just brought me back to this energy of the 2012 draft, when we ‘over-drafted’ a pass rusher, and we drafted a linebacker that didn’t have any instincts, we drafted a quarterback that didn’t fit the height mold, we ‘over-drafted’ a nickel-back, ‘over-drafted’ a third-down back, and we converted a defensive lineman into an offensive lineman who was still playing for those who were keeping track, or was last year,” Schneider said the week of the 2022 draft. “Then afterwards everybody was giving us Fs. The message is that in this building, we were super-excited. We knew where we were headed. Pete and his staff had a great plan. It was loaded with competition, and we’re excited to see that competition.”
Of course, the Seahawks had also traded their offensive cornerstone — that quarterback who didn’t fit the height mold — which added a new dynamic to the process.
The Russell Wilson trade was an enabler and a motivator.
The trade of Russell Wilson to the Denver Broncos, whatever you may say about it now on the Denver side, was a no-brainer for both teams. The Broncos believed that, like the 2020 Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the 2021 Los Angeles Rams, they were only a quarterback away from a Super Bowl win, so making a deal like the ones the Bucs made in signing Tom Brady, or the Rams made in trading for Matthew Stafford, made all the sense in the world.
For the Seahawks, it was not unlike the Herschel Walker trade Jimmy Johnson of the Dallas Cowboys made with the Minnesota Vikings to get his team jump-started in 1989. The Wilson trade didn’t hinge on conditional picks as the Walker trade did, but for Carroll and Schneider, the lasting effect was hopefully the same. Johnson built a Super Bowl champion out of the wise use of the boatload of picks he got in the trade, and the Seahawks got two first-round picks, two second-round picks, a fourth-round pick, and quarterback Drew Lock, tight end Noah Fant, and defensive lineman Shelby Harris.
Nobody could have expected Wilson to fall apart completely in Denver, so to the majority of observers, it appeared as if the Broncos fleeced the Seahawks in the trade. Many said the same thing about Johnson getting robbed by the Vikings, until things played out the ways in which they did.
Carroll and Schneider risked looking like idiots if Wilson went to Denver and blew it up (instead of blowing up), and the 2022 draft was in any way like the ones before it over the last few years.
So, with Wilson out the door and all that capital in pocket, they went to work.
Charles Cross and Abe Lucas: Making recent history
It’s hardly unusual for a team to select two offensive tackles in the same draft. It is, however, highly unusual for two rookie tackles to be its team’s starters from Day 1. But the Seahawks took Mississippi State left tackle with the ninth overall pick, and Washington State right tackle Abraham Lucas with the 72nd overall pick in the third round, the idea was to have the two youngsters starting right away. The last NFL team to do this was the 2009 Jacksonville Jaguars, who had first-rounder Eugene Monroe and second-rounder Ebon Britton on the field right away.
For Seattle, the risk has been its own reward.
While Cross did have his lunch handed to him in Seattle’s season opener against the Broncos (Bradley Chubb got him twice for sacks around the edge to his back shoulder), Cross has put things right since then. You haven’t seen as much of this.
As he showed on this Week 4 rep against Charles Harris, Detroit’s underrated pass-rusher, Cross is much more aware of the need to get out and be intelligently aggressive in pass pro. On this 23-yard pass from Geno Smith to D.K. Metcalf, Cross rode Harris around the edge for the takedown.
Cross allowed those two sacks and two quarterback hurries against the Broncos; since then, he’s given up one sack, one quarterback hit, and eight quarterback hurries. He’s not been letter-perfect, but he’s a massive improvement over any left tackle the Seahawks have had since Russell Okung, Carroll’s and Schneider’s first draft pick back in 2010.
As for Lucas… well, I’ve already gone into his love of heavy metal and pancake blocks (two of my favorite things on this earth).
In his first six NFL games, Lucas has allowed two sacks, three quarterback hits, and six quarterback hurries. The sacks came in Seattle’s last two games, against the New Orleans Saints in Week 5, and the Arizona Cardinals last Sunday.
When he’s tentative with his hands, as was the case when Cameron Jordan of the Saints christened him with his first NFL sack allowed, Lucas can get into trouble.
But when he’s on the attack… well, here comes the semi truck, headed right for your face.
Perhaps most interesting for a team that wants to be as run-balanced as the Seahawks prefer to be, there was no concern regarding either Cross or Lucas when it came to their pass-heavy college schemes. Cross had the third-most pass-blocking reps among tackles in the FBS in 2021 with 719; only Mason Brooks and Cole Spencer from Western Kentucky (Bailey Zappe’s alma mater) had more.
“When you’re thinking left tackle, you’re thinking pass protection, that’s really the first thought,” Carroll said of Cross just after he was selected. “He has had as much work at that as you can have. Mike (Leach) runs an offense that is going to demand it and he was out by himself a lot on the island, just like a guy has to be. He had no problem with any of the movement and he is stout enough. He runs really well, he’s a fast kid for a tackle and you can just see all of that athleticism that goes back to his hoops ability, and it just seemed to fit. That’s the first thing, can he kick out, get on those fast guys, handle all of the adjustments, and there is no problem for him at all.
“The running game will be something we focus on to catch him up. We heard him talk and he said in interviews that he had been in three-point stances, and he’s worked on that in his past, I think as a high school player. It won’t be a big transition for him at all, he’s too athletic to let that be any concern. We really don’t have any concern other than that making sure that he comes in, he has great work habits, and his coaches rave about all of that and our scouts have uncovered that too. It’s going to be about the process of getting him ready and adapting to our game.”
Carroll and Schneider both brought up how well Cross did against Alabama, and specifically Alabama’s different defensive stunts. Which certainly showed up on tape.
With Lucas, there was a specific connection — Josh Graff, Seattle’s West Coast scout, went to Archbishop Murphy High School in Everett, Washington, which is where Lucas went.
“It’s going to be a challenge,” Carroll said of starting two rookie tackles. “It’s a race to get these guys ready to go. Fortunately, both guys have done a lot of playing, they have a lot of football in their background, and have played a lot of snaps for their teams. It’s certainly going to call for everybody to fit it together just right. We really hope that they can stay healthy, stay on the field, not miss time, and be in really good shape when they get here. That is going to be crucial for these guys so that they can sustain the learning process and if they do that, then can give themselves a chance to compete for playing time. It’s going to be a really competitive camp and this will be a great spot to watch and see how this develops. We have some new rushers and we have some new tackles on the edge, so those battles should be really big time in camp.”
Schneider brought up the fact that both Cross and Lucas played for Mike Leach… but again, the distance from what we think of Leach’s offenses, and the offenses the Seahawks have preferred, is pretty far. Perhaps the Seahawks were imagining a different kind of structure for offensive coordinator Shane Waldron.
The running back Carroll and Schneider took in the second round seemed to prove that point.
Kenneth Walker III: Defining the run game in a different way
Walker’s traits and production project him very well into any zone-heavy run scheme in which he can use his quickness and agility to break off big gains and explosive plays. He’ll never be a headbanger, but if he’s able to advance his route palette and clean up the blocking issues, he has a chance to wow in the NFL as he did in the Big Ten.
That was the conclusion I came to in my pre-draft scouting report on Walker, based on his Michigan State tape. So, it surprised me that the Seahawks took him with the 41st overall pick in the second round. Not because Walker had bad tape — he flashed all over the place as a runner. But given Seattle’s preference for power backs with speed, I didn’t really see the connection to everybody from Marshawn Lynch to Rashaad Penny. I thought that with Florida’s Dameon Pierce still on the board at that point (and somehow on the board until the 107th overall pick in the fourth round, which is where the Houston Texans stole him), Pierce better fit the running back archetype Carroll has preferred.
While I still kinda think that’s the case, there’s no arguing Walker’s production, and his fit in what Seattle’s offense has become in 2022. Last season, per Sports Info Solutions, Seattle had 159 outside zone carries, 11th most in the league. They’ve already had 62 outside zone runs in 2022, which ranks eighth. Last Sunday’s game against the Cardinals was Walker’s first NFL start, and only Tyler Allgeier of the Falcons (another rookie back I thought would fit Seattle’s previous power/speed preferences) had more outside zone runs among all NFL backs than Walker’s 10, for 62 yards and 50 yards after contact.
This 21-yard run against the Cardinals brings all of Walker’s attributes to the fore: Start/stop, acceleration, flow through contact in open space. This isn’t a guy who’s going to go all Beastquake on a defense, but if you get results like this, who cares?
In the end, Michigan State’s run game was broad enough for Carroll and Schneider to see what they needed to see.
“It helps to see him run all of the variety of the plays,” Carroll said after Walker was drafted. “There [are] a lot of shotgun runs that [are] happening in college football, it’s pretty zone oriented and straight forward. They had an NFL style running game and they did a little bit of everything, so you are able to see him run zone schemes, run gap scheme principles, and he’s really effective in the counter game. It was a really good illustration of a guy being able to blossom with a variety of the run game, so it makes sense to us how he really could fit in.”
Coby Bryant and Tariq Woolen: Bringing a new Boom
Carroll is one of the best secondary coaches of his (or any other) era, so even after Richard Sherman left for San Francisco, and Earl Thomas middle-fingered his way out of town… well, it wasn’t the historically great Legion of Boom anymore, but guys like Quandre Diggs and D.J. Reed held the standard to a certain degree. Getting into the wisdom of giving up two first-round picks for Jamal Adams is another matter, but that was Seattle’s impetuous side showing up. The primary issue with that, whether we’re talking about Adams or Percy Harvin or Jimmy Graham, is that Carroll and Schneider have had a tendency to covet amazing athletes without knowing what to do with them.
When the Seahawks were shopping for cornerbacks in this draft, they went about it differently. They took two amazing athletes in Cincinnati’s Coby Bryant with the 109th overall pick in the fourth round, and Tariq Woolen from the University of Texas at San Antonio with the 153rd overall pick in the fifth round. Bryant had established himself as a great island cornerback in Cincinnati’s defense, which was as dominantly single-high with press cornerbacks as any in the NCAA. So, that fit was obvious.
Woolen was a different cat. He lasted until the fifth round despite his ridiculous height/weight/speed profile (running a 4.26-second 40-yard dash at the combine at 6-foot-4 and 205 pounds) because the thought was that Woolen would need a year or two before he understood the complexities of NFL offensive concepts.
Woolen shortened that learning curve more quickly than just about anybody could have imagined. Another aspect of the success of this draft class is that the Seahawks brought former greats back into the building to help with player evaluation and development. Hall of Fame guard Steve Hutchinson was around to help with the offensive line. Hall of Fame left tackle Walter Jones has also been around to help those who have wanted help, which amazingly did not include Germain Ifedi. In the case of the cornerbacks, Sherman became an unofficial and then an official consultant. And in Woolen’s case… well, this was a former receiver who became a cornerback and was taken in the fifth round because nobody could figure out what he was. Which was exactly Sherman’s story.
Woolen has flashed as much as, or more than, any other rookie cornerback this season. He’s allowed 15 catches on 27 targets for 193 yards, 63 yards after the catch, no touchdowns, a league-high four interceptions, and an opponent passer rating of 38.6, the fourth-lowest among cornerbacks who have played at least 20% of their teams’ defensive snaps.
Woolen’s traits show up on the field, but it’s his receiver background that has come to be a major asset. Last Sunday against the Cardinals, he picked off his fourth pass of the season by running Marquise Brown’s route better than Marquise Brown did.
Bryant’s coverage hasn’t been quite as impressive this season — he’s allowed 14 catches on 23 targets for 188 yards, 108 yards after the catch, two touchdowns, no interceptions, and an opponent passer rating of 115.9 — but he has an unusual knack for forced fumbles. He leads the NFL with four, and when he punched the ball out on this Kyler Murray scramble last Sunday, it was Woolen who recovered the fumble. A nice bit of symmetry.
Carroll and Schneider saw Bryant and Woolen as the radically different types of players they were, and they embraced the possibilities — with Bryant as the pro-ready Jim Thorpe Award winner, and with Woolen as the insane mystery box of potential.
“They’re totally different,” Carroll said of Bryant and Woolen right after they were drafted. “It’s rare to get a guy that was chosen as the best DB in the country. That doesn’t happen very often. I don’t know if it’s the Heisman for the DBs or just a great Jim Thorpe award in itself. But that’s pretty cool. And it’s because Coby’s such a good football player, just all around, can do it all, big and strong, really aware, leader on that team, on a championship club, and a really good playmaker.
“The other kid, now this is something. T. Woolen, he’s got unbelievable talent. He’s been a DB for a couple years, was converted from a receiver spot. There’s probably never been a guy that’s as tall as this guy, as fast as this guy, that’s ever run. I don’t know. Maybe there has been. But to be over six-four and to run 4.2-something is a crazy number. But he also, he’s really learning the spot and he’s really growing. So I see they’re different in their makeup and one of the points of that is Woolen will be a guy that we really like to just get him on that line of scrimmage and see if it can he own it because he’s got such style to him. So that’s where we’ll take him. But more versatility in Coby.
“Yeah. Coby was really buttoned up too as a pro, especially down at the Senior Bowl,” Schneider said. “He was talking to Jim Nagy, who runs the Senior Bowl, just throughout the week, the way he handled himself. And then all that guys that went into the school, everything he got out of the coaching staff and everything, he was really, they called him the culture changer. And so, yeah, really excited about him. And like Pete said, Tariq’s just, athletically just a total freak. He’s been playing there for two years now and he’s awesome.”
The Seahawks are clearly on to something.
Any organization can get away from the principles that made it successful. There are splits in thought processes, and success can breed all kinds of negative traits that can spread unchecked. For whatever reason, the Seahawks got away from what made them great, and they aligned themselves with the idea that whatever they did would work.
Perhaps humbled coming into the 2022 draft, Pete Carroll and John Schneider did what successful executives tend to do — they went back to the drawing board, took a good, hard look at their recent failures, and learned from them. Their 2022 draft haul is ample proof of that, and with more picks coming in 2023 as the result of the Wilson trade, they might be in a position to do what most can’t — engineer a successful rebuild when you’re the ones responsible for the need for a rebuild in the first place.
The idea is not to be right all the time. That’s not possible. The idea is to come to your senses, with or without help, and get back to what has made you great. After a long dry spell in the Emerald City, the Seahawks are once again killing it in the vital areas of player acquisition and development.
