The Seahawks had the super-starring \u201cLegion of Boom.\u201d They had Richard Sherman. They had Kam Chancellor, Earl Thomas, Bobby Wagner. They had Marshawn Lynch.<\/p>\n
And for the next decade, they had a problem getting back to the Super Bowl.<\/p>\n
Starting in 2015, the guys they drafted were arriving in awe. Rookies were suddenly teammates with idols they\u2019d watched win the Super Bowl, while the new guys were college and high-school kids.<\/p>\n
Those who joined the post-2015 Seahawks were less likely to make the team better by competing against their idols for their jobs.<\/p>\n
They were more likely to ask for their autographs.<\/p>\n
Now, after 11 years away, the Seahawks have won the Super Bowl again. Seattle\u2019s domination of New England in Super Bowl 60 in February won the franchise\u2019s first NFL championship in a dozen years.<\/p>\n
The same man who saw internal competition wane on his team the last time this happened is in charge of making sure it doesn\u2019t happen again in 2026, and beyond.<\/p>\n
General manager John Schneider is valuing a prospect\u2019s competitiveness \u2014 how they project to compete in Seahawks practices with Pro Bowl and All-Pro stars Devon Witherspoon, Leonard Williams, Jaxon Smith-Njigba, Cooper Kupp and DeMarcus Lawrence, plus Ernest Jones, Byron Murphy and more.<\/p>\n
It may be the number-one trait the GM is targeting for his 17th Seattle draft.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, we\u2019ll be way more cognizant of it,\u201d Schneider told reporters at the league\u2019s spring meeting last week in Phoenix. \u201cHow do they feel about \u2018Spoon\u2019? How do they feel about Leonard? Murphy?<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s got to be a level of confidence, self-efficacy that we have to dig deeper into.\u201d<\/p>\n
Schneider says the Seahawks are evaluating draft choices for \u201cnot just being fans of these guys, but like, \u2018I want to take their jobs.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
That way, the GM says, \u201cthe competition just rises to the top.\u201d<\/p>\n
Schneider has mentioned this multiple times in the last year. That includes through the Seahawks winning 17 of 20 games, then the Super Bowl to end the 2025 season. It\u2019s perhaps his biggest lesson from reloading a championship team.<\/p>\n
Competitiveness is another of the intangibles Schneider and his scouting and personnel staffs weigh heavily. In many cases, off-the-field traits such as leadership, perseverance and dedication in sticking with one school in an NIL\/transfer-portal college world mean more to the Seahawks than 40-yard dash times and game performances.<\/p>\n
Schneider will tell you when they do it right, guided by intangibles and make-up first, Seattle\u2019s draft board is unique. It\u2019s full of players rated by who they\u2019ve proven to be as persons intrinsically as young adults.<\/p>\n
That makes predicting the prospects the Seahawks will select this month difficult. The team\u2019s draft board is based on internal character assessments no one can time, measure and see on game film.<\/p>\n
Schneider doesn\u2019t want his Seahawks drafting for positional need. Not foremost. The GM has said that\u2019s how his team has gone wrong in drafts over the last decade.<\/p>\n
So just because Super Bowl MVP Kenneth Walker left the team to sign a rich deal with the Kansas City Chiefs in free agency last month doesn\u2019t necessarily mean Seattle\u2019s first pick in this draft will be a running back.<\/p>\n
Unless he\u2019s a competitor. And a good dude, too.<\/p>\n
Last year the top of the draft fell into a perfect confluence of best player, best person \u2014 and position of biggest Seahawks need. Grey Zabel in the first round at 18th overall represented all three. He became the team\u2019s instant, stud starter at left guard.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe value people, not necessarily the position,\u201d Schneider said in late January, between the NFC championship and the Super Bowl. \u201dSo, people, the competitor, how they fit into our organization. And it\u2019s our constant quest to be a consistent championship-caliber football team.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t really get into, like, position specifics. We just know we want to be smart in the people and the competitor we\u2019re investing in.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow are they going to fit into our building, and how are we going to be able to take care of this person, and how are they going to be able to buy into our culture and what we have going on in the building.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
So how do they do that?<\/p>\n
Those ratings come from dogged investigations and interviewing by Schneider and his staff, learning the whys in a prospect\u2019s family life. They listen to first-hand accounts of interactions on his campuses beyond football coaches \u2014 with teachers, community members and more.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just continuing to interview people, do all your background work, all our connections, all our relationships, college football, pro football,\u201d Schneider said. Where Seahawks stand before draft<\/p>\n
Two weekends remain before the Seahawks are due to pick first at 32nd overall, the final selection of round one. Seattle has four choices overall in the 2026 draft that begins April 23 in Pittsburgh. The Seahawks own the last picks in each of the first three rounds, plus a sixth-round choice.<\/p>\n
It would be the second-fewest choices in a draft in Seattle\u2019s 51-year history. The team had three choices in 2021. That was by design; it was the COVID-19 draft.<\/p>\n
This year having only four picks is also by Seahawks design. Schneider has said he and his staff view this year\u2019s draft as weaker, with less depth in talent across seven rounds, than last year\u2019s draft was, and the 2027 draft will be. That\u2019s why the GM traded two third-day picks in this year\u2019s draft to New Orleans to acquire Pro Bowl kick returner Rashid Shaheed in November.<\/p>\n
Yet there\u2019s a strong chance Seattle will end this draft April 25 with more than four selections. Schneider has made 74 trades involving picks over 16 previous drafts as Seattle\u2019s GM. Thirty-three of those trades have been down, to acquire more picks. Fifteen have been trades up higher in rounds. Twenty-six of his trades of draft picks have been to acquire or give up a player.<\/p>\n
Schneider said Thursday on his weekly radio show with KIRO-AM that he and his scouting staff are pretty much done with their draft board. Next weekend, the personnel side will meet with head coach Mike Macdonald and his assistant coaches to vet the board again.<\/p>\n
So no, less than two weeks from the draft, the GM doesn\u2019t feel great about the Seahawks\u2019 draft as champions.<\/p>\n
\u201cTuesday (April 21) before the draft I\u2019ll just be with Mike,\u201d Schneider said. \u201cThen I\u2019ll feel pretty good with it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Seahawks had the super-starring \u201cLegion of Boom.\u201d They had Richard Sherman. They had Kam Chancellor, Earl Thomas,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":863342,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2081],"tags":[7,6,238,237,261,2635],"class_list":{"0":"post-863341","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-seattle-seahawks","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-nfl","10":"tag-seahawks","11":"tag-seattle","12":"tag-seattle-seahawks","13":"tag-seattleseahawks"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116381877797007579","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/863341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=863341"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/863341\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/863342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=863341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=863341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=863341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}