The NFL Owners meetings kick off this week and the two big things to track are, 1) the potential rules changes and 2) the dispersal of 2015 NFL Draft compensatory picks. The latter typically happens today (Monday).
The comp pick formula is an NFL proprietary secret and it's apparently very convoluted, but over the past few years, analysts have gotten better at predicting which teams get picks. The very basic idea is that teams are awarded bonus draft picks for losing big free agents (as compensation, get it?), and the size of each free agent's contract, and their subsequent performance and post-season honors are all taken into consideration for which round the departed free agent is worth (Round 3 is the highest possible). The comp pick formula then crosses off potential comp picks when the team in question signs a free agent to an equal or similar contract to that of their departed player (APY). Cut players don't count. Your own free agents don't count. "Street free agents" signed after June 1st don't count.
Teams can receive a maximum of four comp picks, and the Seahawks are projected to be one of the teams that get the maximum four picks. According to OverTheCap's projection, those four will be a Fourth, two Fifths, and a Sixth. These picks result from the Seahawks losing four "big" to "mid-level" free agents on the open market last year while they concentrated on re-signing their own guys to extensions. Gone were Golden Tate ($6.2M APY in Detroit), Brandon Browner ($5.05M APY in New England), Breno Giacomini ($4.5M APY in New York), and Clinton McDonald ($3M APY in Tampa Bay), and after those guys, the Hawks also lost Walter Thurmond, Paul McQuistan, and Chris Maragos, but again, you can only get four comp picks.
Because Seattle made no big-time outside signings (Kevin Williams was post-June-1st, as was Eric Winston, and Terrelle Pryor was acquired in a trade), all four should go through.
Now, John Schneider had been saying that the team should have ten total picks so he's only counting on three comp picks -- and I believe that's because he doesn't want to count his chickens before they've hatched, so to speak -- but Seattle should really have 11 total if these projections end up correct.
Their draft would look like this, going in, if OverTheCap ends up correct: a Second Rounder, a Third, three Fourths, three Fifths, two Sixths, and a Seventh. The Hawks lost their native Sixth Round pick in trading for Marcus Burley last year but gained New York's by trading Percy Harvin. They added New Orleans' Fourth Round pick after trading away their First and Max Unger to the Saints.
Of course, this is all projection. The Seahawks could conceivably receive only three picks, or on the other end of the spectrum, the haul could be two Fourths, a Fifth, and a Sixth. We should know by the end of the day.