Seahawks have rarely found their stars in the first round of the NFL draft
Seahawks roll lucky sevens
I suppose the best thing that can be said about the 2016 draft is that all eight of Seattle’s first picks are still in the league, and six of them still with the Seahawks. Well, and that second-round pick Jarran Reed went full-on animal this past year. Reed broke out in 2018, so I still have a very, very small hope that Germain Ifedi can do the same in 2019. Hey, as Mickey Rourke said in Diner, “If you don’t have good dreams, you got nightmares.” So please, let me have my dreams.
The 2017 draft wasn’t exactly great at the top, thanks to ATVs, but the Seahawks did pick up a lot of depth in that draft. Depth, and a couple of really decent starters. Shaquill Griffin may have fallen off in 2018, but Pete Carroll has made it clear that he has confidence in him, saying, “He’s just going to continue to get better”. Carroll obviously knows a hell of a lot more about football than I do, especially when it comes to secondary play. For what it’s worth, I agree; I think we’ll see Griffin take a big step forward in 2019.
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The real star of the Seahawks 2017 draft already took his big step forward last year. Chris Carson saw his rookie season derailed by injury, but he came back like a man possessed in 2018. Seventh-round draft picks often don’t make the team after the last preseason game, let alone finish fifth in the league in rushing. I guess someone forgot to tell Carson. Not too shabby for a guy who missed being Mr. Irrelevant by just four places.
No, I didn’t forget about fourth-round pick Tedric Thompson, the incumbent starter at free safety. He wasn’t exactly Earl Thomas, but then, no one else is, either. Thompson was a very good complement to Bradley McDougald, though.
As site co-expert Lee Vowell wrote, Thompson has every chance to be the starter for years to come. Carson wasn’t Seattle’s only seventh-round pick, either. Wide receiver David Moore was showtime personified for most of an eight-game stretch in midseason, but cooled off to the point of nearly disappearing after his big game against the Panthers. He only caught four of sixteen targets in his last five games, but I believe he can at least get close to the form that saw him catch four touchdowns in a three-game stretch.