Stop me if you’ve heard this before: Analysts give Seahawks’ draft class a failing grade

The 2021 NFL Draft is over and that means the talking heads and writers all get to put in their grades, which is merely a fun exercise and otherwise means absolutely nothing. They do make for good outrage clicks so I might as well stop by and tell you that there was very little respect for the Seattle Seahawks’ three-man draft class.

German-based NFL fan Rene Bugner put together 18 evaluations and turned their respective assigned letter grades into a traditional GPA. If a 2.0 is a passing grade then based on this sample size, the Seahawks and Houston Texans were the only ones who managed to fail the class before minicamp has even begun.

Now to be fair I have to think that there were a few grades that were just bang on that C range just due to the lack of picks, but nevertheless that’s quite harsh, don’t you think?

The Athletic’s Michael-Shawn Dugar noticed that worst grades all centered around dislike of the D’Wayne Eskridge pick at 56th overall. One of the graders flat out said wide receiver was a position that the Seahawks absolutely did not need to address, which I thoroughly disagree with and have since last year’s draft.

If you look at the more generous graders who all gave Bs, they all liked Eskridge! At least Mel Kiper Jr was sensible enough to just admit he didn’t really know how to give a grade with such a small draft class.

We have been here before. Seattle’s greatest ever class and maybe one of the best ever drafts in NFL history was widely panned at the time. Roll the video tape and we can include 2011!

This isn’t to say the “experts” will be wrong about the 2021 Seahawks class. Maybe Eskridge is a bust and Tre Brown is Kelly Jennings 2.0 and Stone Forsythe is not as cool as his name suggests. But the reasoning in most draft grades seem so pathetically lazy and especially when it comes to the Seahawks. Every pick is a “reach” and any time they don’t take an offensive lineman early (even though they’ve done that many many many many times over in Day 1-2) is seen as some horrendous mistake.

I’m taking the optimistic route on this year’s group. I believe all three picks addressed areas of need and given the lack of draft capital I am pleasantly surprised they didn’t waste it on a position rich in depth. Add in their usual aggressive approach to signing UDFAs and the expectation that they’ll had some more faces off the free agent market, and I’m pleased with how the weekend has gone.

We won’t truly get a good read on the 2021 draft picks until at least three seasons from now, and just mathematically speaking the Seahawks will be one of the few teams in which the majority of their rookie class will be playing significant snaps.