Armed With Multiple High-Value Picks, Seattle Seahawks Excited For Rare Opportunity in 2022 NFL Draft

RENTON, Wash. — The final time the Seahawks picked within the top-10 of the NFL draft, head coach Pete Carroll and common supervisor John Schneider had been simply settling into their present positions. Reaping the advantages of the earlier regime’s shortcomings, the eventual longtime duo made their first draft choose collectively in 2010 at slot No. 6, taking offensive sort out Russell Okung out of Oklahoma State.

Since then, Seattle has gone on to seem in two Tremendous Bowls, successful one, whereas posting the sixth-highest successful share (61.9 %) within the NFL. Earlier than trades, the group has sat as little as No. 32 in a selected draft and no increased than No. 12. 

Now a dozen years faraway from the day Okung’s identify was known as by NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, the Seahawks have returned to the highest half of the draft order—however not on account of their first sub .500 season since 2011. The No. 10 choose derived from their failures as a substitute belongs to the Jets as a part of the commerce that despatched security Jamal Adams to the Pacific Northwest in the summertime of 2020. Alternatively, Seattle will choose one spot forward of New York with the No. 9 choose acquired from Denver in return for star quarterback Russell Wilson.

Naturally, dealing away somebody of Wilson’s fame has marked a seismic shift for the Seahawks as a franchise. With precisely one week to go till the 2022 NFL Draft kicks off in Las Vegas, Nevada, Schneider and Carroll are basically entering into uncharted waters, with the previous joking that neither considered one of them “know what do with [their] palms.” 

However whereas the gravity of their upcoming choices is immense, Seattle’s main males can’t assist however be enthusiastic concerning the challenges forward.

“There’s positively an pleasure about this,” Carroll expressed throughout his joint press convention with Schneider on Thursday afternoon. “… There’s solely so many issues that may occur whenever you’re choosing twenty fifth and twenty eighth and down, there’s one million eventualities. This isn’t like that; it is just a little totally different. So there is a totally different degree of pleasure concerning the alternative.”

As to be anticipated, Schneider has left the door open for a possible commerce again. 

“We might choose at 9, we might not,” Schneider floated. “We do not know but. We’re gonna do no matter we will to assist this soccer workforce as a lot as we presumably can.”

Whereas that is on no account a affirmation that Seattle is planning to work its manner down the draft order subsequent week, one might actually discover the deserves of doing so. Little or no is about in stone with this yr’s draft class, significantly within the top-10. It is a extremely proficient group, however one which lacks a consensus No. 1 participant and has rather a lot using on the destiny of a divisive class of quarterbacks.

That, paired with a possible return that will nearly actually embody not less than one different premium draft choose, creates a lovely proposition for a workforce within the Seahawks’ place. Regardless of their said emphasis on competing in 2022, there are clear holes littered throughout their roster, together with the chasm opened at quarterback by Wilson’s gorgeous departure. 

Primarily, Schneider and his workers have been supplied with a clean canvas, free to color the way forward for their group because it involves them. There are an infinite variety of prospects and routes they’ll go down, and it does not simply cease with their first choice.

The Seahawks not solely have the Broncos’ first-round choose, however their second as nicely—slotted at No. 40, only one choose forward of Seattle’s personal second-rounder. Schneider and firm might choose to remain put and make the most of the uncommon probability to pick a pair of prospects back-to-back. However they might additionally commerce down from one or each of them, or use them to commerce again into the mid-to-late first spherical. 

“That was a giant a part of the [Wilson] commerce,” Schneider famous. “To have that flexibility with the second draft choose, particularly on this yr’s draft with the way in which issues look to us. Nevertheless it does provide you with flexibility in choosing back-to-back or transferring round if we deem essential.”

Traditionally talking, trade-ups into the primary spherical are generally made for quarterbacks. The Seahawks have been on the other finish of such offers earlier than, together with 2013 after they traded choose No. 32 to the Vikings, who used the choice to take Louisville quarterback Teddy Bridgewater. 

Finally, all eyes are glued to Seattle, eagerly ready to see the way it approaches the quarterback place. And after what might be roughly seven weeks of rampant hypothesis within the wake of Wilson’s exit, some readability will lastly be given beginning subsequent Thursday.