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Seahawks GM John Schneider traded down twice and Twitter reacted twice

By John P. Gilbert
President Obama Hosts Super Bowl Champions Seattle Seahawks At The White House Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

When Pete Carroll and John Schneider woke up on Thursday morning the Seattle Seahawks had just five selections in the 2019 NFL Draft to their name. However, by the time they went to bed they had wheeled, dealed and transformed those five into LJ Collier of TCU and eight more draft picks, including two for Friday’s and six for Saturday.

The trades came as a surprise to no one who has been following the Hawks for the past several years, and set the team up with significant draft capital in the sweet spot of the draft. Specifically from the top of the second round through the middle of the fifth, which is where the production offered by drafted players exceeds the value of signing a minimum salary veteran.

Basically, the area where teams are most likely to find excess value in the draft in terms of production over salary costs are from the early second round through pick roughly pick 150. Obviously, the exact range depends on how deep a particular draft is, but given those general ranges, it should not surprise anyone that Schneider and Carroll currently hold eight selections between picks 37 and 159, which means that if the team stands pat and use each of their remaining picks, they will have made all nine selections in the sweet spot of the draft. There will still be hits and misses, but in terms of maximizing the probability of generating an outsized return on the picks they received in trading down, the Hawks have set themselves up nicely.

I’ll do a far deeper dive into the expectation of value from these picks after the draft is complete once we see if the Hawks actually use their eight remaining selections, or whether they make even more moves and end up with some later picks on Day 3. For now, let’s take a look at how Twitter reacted to the Seahawks trading down. Twice.

First, let’s not pretend like it was any kind of secret that the Seahawks traded back.

Then we can move to looking at the reactions to the first trade back with the Green Bay Packers.

And then the second trade.

Now, one thing that seems to have confused a lot of observers was why it took so long for the Seahawks to make their pick at 29. The answer to that lies in the fact that if a team allows the clock to expire on their pick, the team selecting behind them has the opportunity to run to submit their pick. Thus, when the ten minutes allotted for the Seahawks selection at 29 ran out, the team holding pick 30 had the opportunity to race and submit a pick. Except in this situation, the Hawks held both picks, so there was no rush for the team to submit their first pick while they explored trade opportunities and made sure they had everything in order. Fans were impatient, but this isn’t the team’s first rodeo, and Schneider was in no rush, knowing that he had the full twenty minutes.

In short, patience is a virtue when the Seahawks are drafting.

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