Seattle Seahawks 53-man roster

Or, more dangerous for the returner, less dangerous for the gunner?

Punt returns I dont know

So, yeah, Washington makes sense. Depending on who starts.

And even if he is starting RB will likely not mean anything on a rotation-heavy offense.

But yeah, PC already said the starting KR is Leon Washington. The PR is, I would guess, Golden Tate, but I don’t know.

Okay, technically that’s a tautology, but that only makes it even truer than a fact. :-)

Here is Shncaeideroll’s justification and screw-up:

1) If a player’s talent exceeds his salary, we can say he has surplus talent

2) If a player’s salary exceeds his talent, we can say he has excessive cost

3) In the salary-cap era, you can build a more talented team than your rivals by having more surplus talent and less excessive cost

4) Players under exclusive rights restrictions (i.e., draft picks who haven’t reached UFA status) have less bargaining power, and are therefore more likely to come at a bargain price.

By trading soon-to-be free agents for draft picks, the front office is trying to increase the surplus talent, which is to say, the talent-per-dollar. And if you have more talent-per-dollar and spend the same amount of money as your rivals, you will have more talent (duh).

But it’s not quite that simple.

Draft picks, especially high picks, are limited. Seattle can never acquire enough to field a championship team composed entirely of players under rookie contracts.

More importantly, roster spots are limited. And low draft picks (like the 5th-rounder that Seattle got for Wilson) occupy more roster spots per unit talent than either high draft picks or free agents. The scenarios might look something like this:

a) A veteran UFA costs $20 million over four years and provides CONTRIBUTION_X over that 4-year period.

b) A mid-first-round draft pick might provide that same CONTRIBUTION_X over the same 4 years for only $16 million. That’s why they love ’em them 1st-rounders.

c) A gaggle of four different 4th-round picks provides CONTRIBUTION_X over a four-year period, earning $1 million/year per player for a total of $16 million. A couple of them might be developing at any given time, one might bust, and it will probably take ‘peak years’ from two or more of the players to sum up to CONTRIBUTION_X. Cap-wise, the mid-round players are a better buy than the veteran. But they cost a lot of draft picks and take up a lot of roster spots, far more than are realistically available.

Look at what Seattle invested in Wilson and you’ll see how mind-bogglingly stupid Shncaeideroll’s plan is. Wilson came as a 2nd-round pick, ate up a roster spot during his unproductive rookie year, then contributed somewhere between high-end backup (e.g., nickelback) and starter level for two more years before being sent packing.

Can the whole team be made with this kind of churn? Sure, Wilson might’ve had a 4th year with Seattle if the overall team had been more developed (i.e., looking at that “contender window”), but we should also consider the fact that Wilson was a quick success whereas some other draft picks (including those developing on the roster) are busts (even though— again— they average a better return per unit salary than non-busting veterans).

Brian Burke has some statistics on starter years by draft round that might help us guess what an all-rookie-contract team might have to look like. First-rounders average 4-5 years as a starter, second-rounders 3.5 – 2 years, third-rounders 1.5 – 2 years, and everyone after that less than a year. Let’s assume you put your first-rounders under 5-year contracts, and the rest pan out at maximum. How many starters can you get out of the draft without paying UFA money?

1st round – 5 starter years
2nd round – 3.5
3rd round – 2
4th round – 1.5
5th round – 1
6th round – 1
7th round – 0.5

Of course, those starts don’t all come in a player’s first four years. Most players leave the NFL because of competition, not because of injury (good players who are hurt rehab and come back). Successful players can easily go for 10+ years. But let’s be conservative and guestimate an 8-year career to account for survivor bias, which means only half of those listed starts would come during the first four (probably less, as its the developed players who start more, but we will again give the youngsters the benefit of the doubt).

So each draft class provides 15 starter-years, or 8 starter-years under their rookie contracts (rounding up because of the 1st-round holdover), which translates to 2 starters/year/class. With 4 classes on the roster at any time, that gives you 8 starters.

That’s a bit short, so let’s give Shncaeideroll credit for UDFA success and count eight UDFA’s per year at the same quality as 7th-rounders. That raises the total to just 10 starters (4 career starts/class, half of which come before UFA status) so it’s time to stockpile those 5th round picks. To make up the difference and reach 22 starting players, they’ll need an additional 24 5th-round draft choices (24 starter-years, 1/2 prior to UFA), which means each draft class + UDFAs will include 39 players. If all 39 were kept on the roster, the four classes would total 157 players at any given time.

That’s a ridiculous number, of course, because most players in a given class will be cut. But because they’d be relying so much on young players who need a year or two of development (and evaluation), a more realistic roster for the NOUFA model would still be closer to 80 than 53.

Is this looking like a bad plan, yet?

One more glitch, as if there weren’t enough: Let’s say you know for certain that exactly 33% of players from a given round will pan out. You need an RT, an OLB, and an RB, so you therefore draft 3 of each and eat up 9 roster spots while the develop. After a year or two, you can evaulate the 3 best players. Guess what the odds are of having exactly one from each position?

If you said 9/28, or 32%, or “pretty crappy”, give yourself full credit.

As I’ve said before, the high-water-market plus UFA status plus2011 salary cap scenario is only the most pessimistic confluence for keeping Josh Wilson. But even in that situation, he’s a bargain. A bargain! He’ll provide fully 1/22nd of the teams starters while only occupying 1/53rd of its roster. He’s more likely to get better than worse; and while any player can start sucking at any time, we can at least be confident that Wilson won’t experience any age-related suck for a significant time, giving the team a broad window to spend precious draft picks on other talent while trying to build a champion.

Cheers,
Jason

…oh yeah. Wilson. WILSON!!!

If not more than one.

As said, this is hardly the “final” roster despite the tendency of some to refer to it as such

shouldn’t Andrews be replacing him?

I’m not sure he’s much of an anything.

…at EVERY position!

got waived by MC CRAP NOL . Polumbus was actaully better then any OL we had last year

Not many decent young QBs on the open market these days, and I’m sure Rodgers is sticking around Green Bay for awhile.

They pretty much let Brandon Jackson destroy our camp bodies in that game, but I watched him play the next week and he has some real skills.

its going to be a 4th, Its based on games played , a 4th for wilson is good

its not just height tho, Sanders is a DPO. Smith is an allpro, Josh wilson is a nickle corner

If the Seahawks are still interested in trading for him. Waiting until after his suspension is raised weakens the Chargers hand a bit.

His deadline is the roster deadline, aka three hours ago.

He might’ve signed or reported and we just haven’t heard about it, but it looks like he missed the deadline.

PC has claimed that Washington would start at KR “if the season started today”, and has claimed Washington would start at RB "if the season started today. Check back Sept. 12.

Could be seen as the coaches valuing his health more than JJ/Force. Or they could have just been protecting a recently injured guy, who knows.

I figured at that point he must have gotten into someone’s doghouse

He’s worth a look as a third back. Potentially great zone blocking back is probably overstating it though.

Given how the offense and special teams left them with poor field position and left them on the field for a long time, the fact that they only gave up 23 points (21, more like, given that safety was not their fault) is something that I’ll take. The defense kept UW in the game much better than the offense did.