NFL Draft 2015: Final Seahawks visits tracker

Another year of VMAC Pre-Draft visitor tracking is coming to a close. Of course, my goal every year is to get all 30 (if they had 30), but I was able to get 26 this year (not bad!).

The final tally has 12 Offensive players and 14 Defensive players. The Seahawks had six offensive linemen, five receivers, four edge players, and seven defensive linemen visit. Those will be positions of strong interest in this draft. I can see the Seahawks (if they do select 11 times) snagging two offensive linemen, two receivers, two defensive linemen, and one edge player.

The Cornerbacks are missing for the most part on this list, but I think Seattle has to cloak their cornerback interest more, as the NFL has a shortage of corners, and there is a shortage of players that fit the Seahawks prototype in terms of length. I bet most of the Seahawks cornerback interests were done as offsite workouts, with strong notes to the player and agent to keep the visit quiet.

I put estimated rounds for where I think these players will go (all my judgment) and I included SPARQ* scores from Zach Whitman for the names I could dig up. I expressed these SPARQ scores in the form of "Z-Scores" which are standard deviations from the NFL median for that particular position. Again, these scores are measured against the entire NFL, which is a much higher bar than the particular draft class. Less than 20% of a class of 2000 Draft eligible players will score a 0.0 or above z-score.

*(NOTE: A SPARQ score is a composite score using a players (1) weight, (2) 40 time, (3) vertical jump, (4) short shuttle, (5) bench press. A heavier player will receive a higher SPARQ score than a comparative lighter player- if their combine results were identical.)

Zach wrote a nice article today on how many of the Offensive Line VMAC visitors have a similar athletic profile to other Drafted Seahawks. There are some interesting high SPARQ names on the workout list (Jesse Davis and Darius Allen and more). The Seahawks hid their local visit day in 2015, which is smart, as that could help them when they invite guys to rookie tryout camp and when they recruit undrafted free agents. I was able to scour a handful of names (5) for the local day, but in 2014 the Seahawks had 19 invites.

Lastly, I do not think the 26 players above are the players the Seahawks are targeting as "first choice" at 63 or 95, I believe those top names don't visit -- but I do think there are a lot of fall-back names on this list. Fall-back names are very important, with 31 other teams competing for the best players, it is probably rare that playoff teams can get their top choice in the Round or Area. Also, I believe the Seahawks are open to moving up in Round 2 if a player who is regarded as a 30-40 range type player falls down into the 50s. I do not believe any of those players took a visit to the VMAC.

I hope to publish the Nawrocki 7 Round Draft Board tomorrow, to go with the one I've already published based Tony Pauline's rankings, so stay tuned...