2026 Draft thread

[D-train]

Teams are reticent to take QBs in their mid 20s and they play into their 40s. Taking a DB that is 25 is insane imo. By the time time he is acclimated to the league he is out of his prime.

[Donn Beach]

Teams are reticent to take QBs in their mid 20s and they play into their 40s. Taking a DB that is 25 is insane imo. By the time time he is acclimated to the league he is out of his prime.

due to a combination of elite physical traits, high-level,versatility, and a proven "team captain" mentality that overrides concerns about his age

[D-train]

Teams are reticent to take QBs in their mid 20s and they play into their 40s. Taking a DB that is 25 is insane imo. By the time time he is acclimated to the league he is out of his prime.

due to a combination of elite physical traits, high-level,versatility, and a proven "team captain" mentality that overrides concerns about his age

team captain mentality.

[D-train]

Massive piece by Condotta. I wonder how long it took him to write this. I now pay $20 a month for the Times. Well worth it.

Four ways Seahawks can use NFL draft to keep LOB history from repeating
April 18, 2026 at 6:00 am Updated April 18, 2026 at 6:01


Bob Condotta By Bob Condotta
Seattle Times staff reporter
The more salacious and maybe more convenient reason for why the Legion of Boom era Seahawks never got back to another Super Bowl after losing to the Patriots in 2015 was the fallout surrounding the way that game ended.

If that infamous interception in the end zone doesn’t happen, the narrative has often gone, then the Seahawks would have just kept going back to Super Bowls.

But a contributing factor is that the talent pool from the NFL draft that built the 2013 Super Bowl winning team became shallower as the LOB era continued.

The team that beat the Broncos in New Jersey featured 15 players the Seahawks either drafted or signed as undrafted free agents from 2010-12.

Eight of those players would make at least one Pro Bowl as a Seahawk — Russell Wilson, Bobby Wagner, Richard Sherman, Russell Okung, Earl Thomas, K.J. Wright, Kam Chancellor and Doug Baldwin.



From 2013-21, the Seahawks drafted only three position players who made a Pro Bowl as a Seahawk — Tyler Lockett, Shaquill Griffin and DK Metcalf (punter Michael Dickson also has made a Pro Bowl and Frank Clark made three with the Kansas City Chiefs).

While the Seahawks had winning records in all but one season in that time, they didn’t advance past the divisional round of the playoffs.

Simply hitting on a few more picks the way they had from 2010-12 might have made all the difference (admittedly a tough task, but that was the bar that had been set).

Here comes another Super Bowl-winning Seahawks team, that while not as homegrown as the first one — most notably, signing the quarterback as a free agent — was still heavily built through the draft.

Of the 22 starters for the Super Bowl win over the Patriots two months ago, 11 were draft picks — including budding or already-there stars such as cornerback Devon Witherspoon, receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba, left tackle Charles Cross, guard Grey Zabel and defensive back Nick Emmanwori — and another who signed as an undrafted free agent. All arrived since 2022.

The trick is to keep the talent spigot running full blast, beginning with this year’s draft Thursday through Saturday.


Or, at least, keep it from slowing to a trickle.

How can the Seahawks do that?

Here are four ways.

Continuing to find gems while picking lower in the draft
One reason it’s hard to stay at the top is that Super Bowl champion teams are a victim of their own success by having to pick at the bottom of the draft.

Five of the Seahawks’ Super Bowl starters this year were taken in the top 20 picks of the draft — Witherspoon (5), Cross (9), defensive tackle Byron Murphy II (16), Zabel (18) and Smith-Njigba (20). Emmanwori was 35th and Super Bowl MVP Kenneth Walker III was 41st.

The Seahawks enter the draft holding just one pick in the first 63 — at 32.

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Schneider and his team deserve immense credit for hitting big on all five of those early picks.

While this may feel like an obvious point, it’s also a stark reality of the draft that it’s a bit easier to strike gold at the top than at the bottom.

Consider that there have been 20 players taken at No. 20 during the Super Bowl era to make the Pro Bowl compared to just eight selected at 32.


The Seahawks famously built the LOB-era in part on some hard-to-top success with mid-to-late round picks such as Chancellor and Sherman (fifth round) and Wright (fourth).

But that’s not easy to replicate, as became apparent following the Super Bowl win.

Simply put, the Seahawks this year — and maybe for a while — have a lower margin for error with the picks they do have and will need to maximize those choices.


That this year’s draft isn’t regarded as an overly strong one won’t make the challenge any easier, but that’s a fate facing every team.

Seahawks defensive end L.J. Collier claps after taking down Texans running back Rex Burkhead during a game in 2021. (Jennifer Buchanan / The Seattle Times)

Seahawks defensive end L.J. Collier claps after taking down Texans running back Rex Burkhead during a game in 2021. (Jennifer Buchanan / The Seattle Times)
Continuing not to reach for need
Schneider has said one change the team made through the years is resisting the urge to draft primarily for need.

“I feel like we’ve made some mistakes where we’ve pushed players based on need and what the draft looks like,” he said a few years ago on his radio show on Seattle Sports 710. “So that particular class, say you have — I’m using generalities here and vague terms — but if you have one receiver on the board in one round, and then there’s a gap of two rounds, and you have five cornerbacks on the board in those same two rounds, (the idea is) ‘Well, we should just go ahead and take the receiver.’

“Well, is the receiver really the best player, or is the corner the best player with more options below him? And in retrospect, over the years, when we look back at pushing players up, you can do that based on need, because you say that guy’s gonna step right in and he’s gonna play. But is that truly accurate when you’re comparing the players?”

The Seahawks appeared to specifically draft for need at the top and did so with mixed results in 2019. Their top two picks that year were end L.J. Collier at 29 (to replace Frank Clark, who had been traded a few days earlier) and safety Marquise Blair at 47 (to help replace Earl Thomas, who had just signed with the Ravens as a free agent). Neither panned out as hoped.

Another season the Seahawks appeared to heavily target need was 2017, when they used four of their top-eight picks on defensive backs in an attempt to reload the LOB, doing so with mixed results.

Some have pointed to the 2023 first-round selections of Witherspoon and Smith-Njigba as examples of the Seahawks targeting the best player more than need, since many assumed they would go after linemen that year. The Smith-Njigba pick was made knowing that Lockett likely had only a few years remaining and that a contract impasse with Metcalf might be looming quicker than people thought.

Need always factors in, as Schneider alludes to when he says often that “we grade for our team we don’t grade for the NFL.” The challenge, as Schneider acknowledged, is to not let it be the only factor.


Continuing to balance draft capital with trades
As referenced above, this year’s Super Bowl team was built a bit more with trades that used draft capital along the way than was the LOB squad, such as the deal for Leonard Williams in 2023, Ernest Jones IV in 2024 and Rashid Shaheed in 2025.

Not that trades didn’t help in the LOB era (Marshawn Lynch, most notably).

But Schneider has said the team learned from some deals that didn’t go quite as planned, notably the trade for Jimmy Graham in which the Seahawks dealt their 2016 first-round pick and center Max Unger.

Schneider said in a recent interview with SI.com he regretted dealing Unger, which along with seeing Okung leave via free agency led to the O-line undergoing a complete makeover by 2016 from the team that won the Super Bowl.

“Because you rob Pete to pay Paul and offensive line’s a hard position to acquire anyway,” Schneider said of dealing Unger.

That deal was also part of a run from 2012-19 in which the Seahawks never used their original first-round selection, either trading down or out of the round completely, usually to acquire more picks in later rounds.

The Seahawks had chances to trade down or out the last few years but has kept and used their first-round picks each of the last four drafts on Cross, Witherspoon, Murphy and Zabel, decisions that have paid off handsomely.

Last year, two of their four draft-weekend trades were to move up in the draft and get the picks that became Emmanwori and defensive lineman Rylie Mills.

Have the Seahawks had a shift in philosophy or simply approached each situation as it happened and made what they felt was the best decision at the time?

Probably more the latter. But the last few years also shows the Seahawks ability to be flexible and not rely on just one strategy for talent acquisition.

Identifying players ready for the challenge
Another thing Schneider has said the team has changed through the years is narrowing their draft board and focusing on those players the team thinks will most fit schematically and culture-wise.

That might help the Seahawks avoid what Schneider he felt was an issue in the LOB era of drafting some players who arrived a little bit in awe of joining a Super Bowl champion team filled with some of the biggest players in the game.

Some drafted players, he said, didn’t come to Seattle thinking they could compete with the likes of a Wagner, Sherman or Chancellor.

“Got to be a little more cognizant of it,” Schneider said at the league meetings last month. “How do they feel about (Witherspoon), how do they feel about Leonard (Williams), Murphy? There’s got to be a level of confidence, self-efficacy that we have to dig deeper into. … Not just being fans of these guys, but like, ‘I want to take their jobs.'”