Top 10 Draft "Busts" in Seattle Seahawks History: #3 - Koren Robinson

2nd overall pick, QB and all. Simple fact is you HAVE to hit on that.

BUT, I also think there was a lot of different stuff that contributed to the whole mess, and at least the pick is defensible. Mirer was a proven commodity in college, and by all consensus was worthy of his draft position. He did show a lot of promise his rookie year and earned honors. Despite injuries, he showed improvement his 2nd year and cut down on the INT’s. His completion % taken in context is not as horrible as it looks – obviously there were a few WCO teams, and the Cowboys quick game with Aikman coming into it’s own, but at the time the NFL was still mainly a run-oriented deep-pass league, and 50%-55% was the norm. Tom Flores had gutted this team of talent, and had become equally obsolete as a HC. Mirer was thrown to the wolves heading what had been one of the NFL’s most historically inept offense just the season before. As far as surrounding talent, he had a broken-down Brian Blades and Chris Warren (who was an average RB that just happened to get fed the rock a lot) and that was it.

Despite being hailed as the prototypical WCO QB, Flores stuck him in a traditional vertical passing offense that had last been successful in the early 80’s. He was stuck in the pocket and forced to take a beating behind a horrible OL. He went through a coaching change for his 3rd year, and despite a more modern approach, Erikson was still a vertical guy (his idea for a hand-picked QB for his system was the big-armed and statuesque John Friez). It’s almost like the organization was so upset they missed out on Bledsoe, that they kept trying to turn Mirer into him. 4 years of taking a beating, fed-up fanbase, new brain-trust that didn’t choose him, and needing to distance from the Behring years, obviously time to send him away. But you can’t discount what we received back for him – a 1st rounder that gave us the ammo to maneuver in the ‘97 draft and get a HOF LT and a Pro-Bowl CB. Mirer managed to stick in the NFL for a few seasons after the Bearscut him – settling into a role as a back-up with WCO teams, where he had the reputation of being football-smart and a good mentor. I can’t help but think that if he had started in Seattle with better coaching or an offensive system tailored to his strengths, he could’ve developed.

The McGwire pick was later in the 1st round (#16 is still a pretty big deal) and IMO will always be the more heartbreaking of the two, especially considering the back story. He was much more of a risky prospect, relatively unknown (only because of his brother), and considered a substantial reach at the time he was chosen. Like eofan said, despite being given time to sit, and eased in, he couldn’t even hack it in the NFL for more than 5 games, and was out of the League a year after we cut him. If the narrative that the Seattle media tells is true – Knox and the scouts all had Favre as the top QB on their board (doubtful they would’ve pulled the trigger on their own that early in the 1st, and he wouldn’t have lasted till their 2nd, but still …) Behring stepped in and made the pick entirely on his own, over the objections of everybody. It caused the rift that forced Chuck Knox out the door and set the stage for the Flores disaster, which almost ended with the team in LA.

And IMO, the opportunity cost of McGwire busting was even worse – the team was still relatively talented and well-coached. The Mirer pick came after we hit bottom, but the McGwire pick is what started the downfall.

But rather than characterizing it as being “caught with their pants down,” I would say it was more like: caught with their belt a little loose and the Vikings pulled down their pants.

The Seahawks did nothing different than many previous teams who used the transition tag to retain a player they wanted to retain. The Seahawks just got unlucky with the perfect storm of conditions where an NFL team decided to take the opportunity to try to skirt the spirit of a rule and destroy the rule by finding a loophole.

No way could any GM have predicted something like that could happen or even that once it did, that the NFL would roll over and let it happen. The lightning strike analogy is good, especially if you include there was no lightning storm at the time.