And unequivocal proof that they have constantly tried to reach and it has resulted in an epic fail nearly every time. The few times they didn't reach they have made good pick.
By Ben Baldwin
May 4, 2022
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It’s no secret that the Seahawks haven’t been a good drafting team since the famed drafts of 2010 through 2012. Due to a series of poor drafts and ill-conceived trades, the Seahawks have few building blocks on the roster and are starting a rebuild (whether they admit it or not) without a franchise quarterback. As an example of how the franchise is viewed, ESPN’s Mike Clay’s combination of unit grades rated it as the fifth-worst roster on both sides of the ball and the fourth-worst roster overall before the draft, and betting markets had them with a 50 percent chance to win six games or fewer. Entering the draft, the team had holes at the premium positions of quarterback, pass rusher, both tackle spots and cornerback.
However, I’m encouraged by the process behind the 2022 draft, which represented a big improvement from prior years and went a long way toward rebuilding the core of the roster. Let’s dive in.
How this Seahawks draft was different
This section will rely on the Consensus Big Board, gathered annually by The Athletic’s Arif Hasan since 2014. As the name suggests, these boards are compiled by taking the average rankings of — as of 2022 — 82 different draft analysts and combining them for a “wisdom of the crowds” approach to ranking draft prospects. As PFF’s Timo Riske has demonstrated, these big boards predict production in the NFL about as well as actual draft position. In other words, evaluators on the outside — like The Athletic’s Dane Brugler — rank NFL prospects about as well as the teams themselves even though the teams have access to far more information about players, including their medical records.
By comparing a player’s position on the Consensus Big Board to where he was actually drafted, we can determine which players were reaches (i.e., drafted before the consensus thought they should be). Why is reaching bad? For one, the team is picking a player ahead of many others who a consensus of draft analysts believe to be better prospects. For another, they are displaying overconfidence in their own evaluation skills. Reaching for a player is a message that you think you are a better evaluator than your peers. Based on prior history, there is little reason for any given team to think this is the case. As Riske concluded in his study of draft reaches, “Reaches indeed underperformed their expectations based on their draft selection, justifying the label that they received at draft time.” This is a variant of Sheil Kapadia’s first draft commandment: “Don’t be overconfident in your ability to evaluate talent.”
With the above framework in mind, let’s return to the Seahawks. The table below shows their top-75 selections since the first Consensus Big Board in 2014. Why the top 75? These are the most valuable draft picks and the picks for which there is more of a consensus on players.
The above table may be read as follows. Beginning with the first row, Paul Richardson was player No. 87 on the Consensus Big Board but was taken at pick No. 45. On the Fitzgerald-Spielberger Draft Value Chart, the difference between where Richardson was selected at Pick 45 (1071 points) and his Consensus Big Board placement at pick 87 (737 points) is 334 points, which is the “F-S value” shown in the table. That total of 334 points is equivalent to pick No. 192, which is the quantified pick value of the reach, a mid-sixth-rounder. The point of using a draft-value chart here is to put a number behind the idea that, for example, a 20-pick reach is more impactful earlier in the draft than later in the draft.
Examples of past Seahawks reaches include Richardson, Justin Britt (ranked No. 240 on the Consensus Big Board but picked in the second round), L.J. Collier (ranked No. 64 on Big Board, drafted at No. 29), Ethan Pocic (No. 76 on Big Board, drafted at No. 58), Marquise Blair (No. 121 on Big Board, drafted at No. 47), Jordyn Brooks (No. 84 on Big Board, drafted at No. 27) and D’Wayne Eskridge (No. 75 on Big Board, drafted at No. 56). It’s hard to argue that any of these players have played up to their draft position, and most weren’t even close.
By contrast, the Seahawks have been very successful in drafting players who weren’t reaches. Jarran Reed, Tyler Lockett and DK Metcalf all either received second contracts from the team or are on their way to doing so. It’s also notable that all three were obtained by trading up in the draft. Putting all this together, the basic pattern from prior Seahawks drafts is that they often tended to reach on players, which generally went poorly, or traded up when a player ranked high on the Consensus Big Board was falling. The exceptions worth mentioning are Malik McDowell, who fell to the Seahawks after a series of trade downs but suffered an injury before taking the field for Seattle, and Frank Clark, who was a successful reach but a polarizing player on Big Boards due to his background.
The 2022 draft saw a notable departure from this trend, with the Seahawks not reaching with their premium picks. Charles Cross was selected at exactly his Big Board spot (No. 9), Boye Mafe was No. 35 on the Big Board (taken at No. 40), Kenneth Walker III was No. 43 on the Big Board (pick No. 41) and Abraham Lucas was No. 71 on the Big Board (pick No. 72). By not reaching, the Seahawks gave themselves the best odds of picking the best prospect available at a given draft spot.
For anyone who wants to see a full list of draft picks by all teams compared to the Consensus Big Board, this chart from Sebastian Carl has them conveniently listed in one place.
Comparing the Seahawks to other teams in 2022
Let’s turn to how the Seahawks fared against the other teams in the 2022 draft. In this section, we will rely on data gathered by Benjamin Robinson for Grinding the Mocks, which gives us a convenient way to compare across teams. Each year, Robinson collects mock draft data to get a sense of whether teams used picks on players in the range that those players were expected to be drafted based on mock drafts. Using this information, Robinson creates an annual measure called Draft Capital Over Expected (DCOE). Here is what it looks like for 2022:
The figure above shows two measures: one that adjusts for the value of picks that the team had (left) and the other providing the total amount gained or lost (right). By both measures, the Seahawks finished in the top five, which suggests that they used their picks to select players the consensus thought highly of. Again, this is very different from how Seattle approached the draft in the past. In 2020, for example, the Seahawks placed near the bottom in both measures (we’re skipping 2021 here because the team only had three picks):
The Seahawks evaluating players similar to the wisdom of the crowds in 2022 is a welcome change from past drafts.
Still a work in progress
The section above was fun to write. The Seahawks did something well! But let’s talk briefly about the Kenneth Walker pick. I know this is beating a dead horse at this point, and The Athletic’s Michael-Shawn Dugar has discussed it here, but as long as NFL teams keep making these mistakes, the positional value discussion will continue to pop up.
The primary problem with taking a running back with a premium pick is that there’s little evidence that NFL teams can differentiate the best prospects from the worst ones at the top of the draft well enough to justify the cost of picking a running back high.
The above is again from Riske, who wrote a series of pieces looking at talent drop-offs in the draft. In the figure above, each position has a blue line showing the average value of the pick by draft position (with value measured by how NFL teams value positions by their free-agency spending) and an orange line showing the cost, which is the same for each position and determined by draft selection. The green curve of surplus value for running backs is characterized by being very low (not very valuable as revealed by contracts handed out by NFL teams) and relatively flat (the players picked earlier aren’t that much better than those picked later).
If we contrast the running back curve to, say, offensive tackles (upper right), we see a steep drop-off for tackles throughout the first two rounds. The Charles Cross pick was a home run because — in addition to Cross ranking highly on the Consensus Big Board — elite tackles are concentrated at the top of the draft.
The same is not true for running backs. Even if we just honed in on the past decade of Seahawks football, their two best running backs — Marshawn Lynch and Chris Carson — were obtained with Day 3 picks (Lynch via trade and Carson with a seventh-round pick). The Seahawks even had the best offense in football in 2015 with an undrafted free agent, Thomas Rawls, leading the team in rushing. There’s just no evidence that premium draft picks are the only ways to find effective running backs, whether for Seattle or the league as a whole.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be better at running the ball. Teams just don’t need to spend a high draft pick to do it. And those high draft picks come with the opportunity cost of not taking a premium position that has a steeper talent drop-off in the draft. Maybe Walker will be great. Let’s hope he is! But that wouldn’t make the process of taking him sound.
Moving forward
Seattle’s draft represented a leap forward. The franchise didn’t reach on players early, mostly drafted premium positions and filled a lot of roster holes. For Seahawks fans skeptical of letting the regime that allowed the team to reach this point handle the rebuild, this draft went a long way toward assuaging those concerns, with some room to grow still.
There are a couple of caveats to note before wrapping up. The first is that because the NFL Draft is largely random, even a good process like Seattle’s draft this year (Walker pick aside) can result in a bad draft class. That doesn’t mean that drafting intelligently isn’t a good idea. You’re still giving yourself the best odds at your players hitting. But in the draft, even the best odds are no guarantee.
The second is that we can’t definitively say the Seahawks changed their process for this draft. It is entirely possible that the Seahawks just happened to have a similar board to the league as a whole this year and that we’ll see more off-the-wall picks in the future. What we’re actually able to say is that the results of their process (i.e., the actual draft selections made) gave them a better outlook for this draft class than prior ones. With extra first- and second-round picks coming in the 2023 draft due to the Russell Wilson trade, we will have more evidence after next year’s draft about whether there really has been a process shift.
Given that the Seahawks still have a giant question mark at quarterback, how should they approach the rest of the offseason? If it were me, I would stand pat at quarterback, come to terms with probably being bad in 2022 (unless Drew Lock has a miraculous turnaround) and go into the 2023 draft with a lot of ammunition to go get a quarterback. In their minds, the Seahawks probably don’t see themselves as a bottom-tier team in 2022, but as long as they don’t acquire a quarterback before the season starts, they are in effect following the plan I suggested above.
Here’s to an entertaining 2022 season and scouting the 2023 quarterback class.
