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The Ironies of the Draft

Two years ago, the Seahawks made a bit of a splash in the draft by going against conventional wisdom (yeah, we've heard that one before) and took a guy named James Carpenter with the 25th pick of the 2011 draft. Almost everyone in the national media decried the pick as a reach, especially with other offensive linemen still on the board such as Gabe Carimi out of Wisconsin. I myself had mocked Carimi to the Hawks in the hopes that they would draft him. Seahawks fans a whole had to end up settling for the other player from the right side of the offensive line in Wisconsin with John Moffitt. To this day, I still think about what it would be like to have drafted both of those players in 2011...

Critics, myself included, should be made well aware of how the career of "the one that got away" has gone in comparison to the fish that we landed. Out of thirty two possible games played in the last two seasons, Carimi has participated in 18 of them, starting 16. Compare this to James Carpenter, who has started in all 16 games that he has played. People might argue that Chicago still got the better end of the deal considering that Carimi is a tackle and James Carpenter is a guard now. Lo and behold, nfl.com recently reported in this story that Carimi is also going to make the transition from tackle to guard.

Obviously, Carimi's career may not look exactly the way it does today had he been drafted by Seattle. This is just kinda me trying to tell myself that things have a way of working themselves out, I suppose. Not that it is particularly fair or relevant to use results-based analysis. Process/methodology should always trump results given the fact that, as I already alluded to in my statement about Carimi, there is no telling how things could possibly go if a single change is made. It's that whole Butterfly Effect thing. Speaking of which, that is an awesome movie...