Seahawks have rarely found their stars in the first round of the NFL draft
The Seahawks have plenty of reasons not to keep their first-round pick in the upcoming NFL draft. That’s why you can ignore all the mock drafts so far.
Virtually every mock draft you can find shows the Seahawks keeping their first-round selection, the 21st in the draft. This is despite Seattle looking at a mere four picks, and a very long history of Pete Carroll and John Schneider moving down in the draft. Even though they stayed in the first round last year, they did move down before picking Rashaad Penny with the 27th pick. In fact, Seattle hasn’t kept their original first-round pick since 2011.
That first-round pick in 2011 is quite instructive. Seattle selected guard James Carpenter with the 25th pick that year. Although he only played in 16 games over his first two seasons due to injury, Carpenter was a good player. He’s made 97 starts in his eight years in the league, so he’s far from a wash-out.
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But he’s hardly the most memorable player the Seahawks found in 2011. Instead, the accolades would fall to a fourth and a fifth-round pick. I’m pretty sure you’ve heard of them: K.J. Wright and Richard Sherman. My go-to site for stats, pro-football-reference.com, created a handy little stat of their own called approximate value. It’s basically a rough, short-hand approximation of a player’s value crunched down to one number so you can compare players across positions, seasons, etc. For an in-depth look, click right here.
For now, it’s enough to know that it’s accurate, and the better you are the higher you rank. For example, Wright’s career value is calculated as 64, while Sherman’s is 91. James Carpenter’s career AV is 45. I don’t want to forget that year’s sixth-round pick, Byron Maxwell and his career AV of 24. He may not have been as valuable as Carpenter, but he was a heck of a lot cheaper. Carpenter wasn’t bad, but he wasn’t close to the guys drafted long after he heard his name called. The Seahawks have built their team with great picks in the later rounds.