It’s the last Friday in April and that means that the NFL Draft is less than a week away. As of today, the Seattle Seahawks can snooze through day 1, and start their draft process on day 2. How can they get away with that, you might ask? Well, as of right now they do not have a first round selection as a result of their March 10th trade that sent Max Unger and their #31 overall pick to New Orleans in exchange for Jimmy Graham and the #112 overall pick. Graham is a once in a generation kind of playmaker, so the trade appears to be in Seattle’s favor.
With 11 selections overall highlighted by three in the 4th, two in the 5th, and three in the 6th; Seattle will have some opportunities to move up, and if they are willing to package one of their future first rounders, they could make a deal that gets them their next great playmaker.
They need to look at drafting an offensive lineman to replace James Carpenter, and have some needs at WR, CB, and RB. They are not short on starters, but the depth is starting to look thin, and the time is now to start replugging those young players as the future stars of yesterday become veterans.
An ideal move would be to package some of their middle round selections and move in to the first round. Guys like Ted Thompson and Bill Belichick love to stockpile draft picks and are usually open to trading down to make the deal happen, and neither have a glaring need to address with picks in the tail end of round one. Seattle would most likely have to give up either their 2nd or 3rd round pick to make it happen, but to get a local talent such as Marcus Peters who appears to have the skillset and attitude the LOB craves, that move might be worth it and then some.
Peters is projected as a highly talented player who may need a year or two with some tough-love coaching, and could be ready to be a full-time stud in year three, a la how Maxwell’s career has gone so far. FA signee Cary Williams has talent and attitude as well, and could a short or long-term solution.
Regardless of whether they make a move to snag Peters, they should package next year’s 1st rounder and a 2nd rounder from this year or next to move up inside the top-20 and get Todd Gurley or Melvin Gordon. Both are big backs with speed and the ability to play in both the rushing and passing attacks, and would be ideal candidates to replace Marhawn Lynch in a year or two. If that idea goes poorly in the draft war room, they could wait and take Jay Ajayi or TJ Yeldon in the 2nd round. Any of the four would be more promising than the backs currently on the roster, but either of the round 2 options come with question marks about their ability at the NFL level, but then again, so did Giovanni Bernard and Eddie Lacy, so take your pick and roll the dice.
Say they trade in to the bottom of the first round and take Peters, and then spend their 2nd rounder on Ajayi, what happens with their need at receiver? Well, that’s where the big move comes in.
The Seahawks need to get on the phone with Jacksonville, Washington, and New York in that order, and offer a package of next year’s 1st and 2nd round picks along with 3rd and 4th round picks from this year to move up to the top 5. With that pick, they select either Amari Cooper or Kevin White, in that order, whichever player is still available. They need to re-sign Jermaine Kearse and field a WR corps of Kearse, Cooper/White, Lockette, and Graham. With Lynch and Ajayi taking turns in the backfield and that LOB-led defense on the other side, as well as a mobile and deadly-accurate Russell Wilson at the controls, this new-look offense has the potential to scare the-you-know-what out of defense coordinators across the league.
This is the kind of stuff you only hear about in movie scripts for Kevin Costner, but it wouldn’t be the first time that bold moves have happened and helped turn a team from struggling to hold back the avalanche of change, to a team towering over the rest of the league from the top of the mountain.
Three trades, 5-6 draft picks they don’t need and will still have 6-7 to draft depth and project players, and in the end get three players they can reload their already very talented roster with.
Does it sound crazy? No. Unlkely? Maybe.
But fortune favors the bold, and the Seahawks need GM John Schneider to pull the trigger on three realistic trades that can help keep this team at the top of the league for the foreseeable future. It is unlikely that all three trades go off without a hitch, or that a team in the top 5 won’t demand two first rounders and a 2nd or 3rd for their top-5 pick, and if that’s the case, it might derail the trade, but with plenty of picks to get value in the mid to late rounds this year, they wouldn’t exactly be mortgaging their future. Take in to consideration that they have been in the Super Bowl or divisional round each of the last three years, and they aren’t likely to see a top-20 pick in the next several years barring a blockbuster trade of one of their cornerstone players.
These trades and several other options like them make sense. The Seahawks could even go for broke and make deals to get Gurley and Cooper or White, and what a headline that would make.
It’s draft day, where futures and dreams are made. Now is the time to go nuts.
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