5 worst first round draft picks in Seattle Seahawks history

The Seattle Seahawks have rarely gone through an extended period of not being good but some of their first-round draft choices have been a disaster. In fact, the period of time that Seattle likely was at its worst corresponded with a number of truly atrocious draft picks. Where would Seattle have been had they taken Brett Favre in 1991 instead of who they did?

One player that is not on the following list of first-round busts is linebacker Brian Bosworth. Was Bosworth good? No. Far from it. But Bosworth was taken in the 1987 supplemental draft, otherwise, you can bet he would have made it on this list.

And while we might be looking at the 2022 Seattle draft in 10 years as one of the best in history, we might say the 2021 draft was one of the worst. But this isn’t an article about overall draft classes (that is another article for another day), this is the top five first-round busts in Seahawks history.

Number 5: Seahawks 2019 draft, number 29 overall: L.J. Collier

Collier started all 16 games in 2020 which is shocking when seen in the greater view when he was a healthy scratch in so many games of 2021 and 2022. One might always wonder exactly what happened between Collier and the Seattle coaching staff because faith in his potential production wasn’t just diminished; It seemed completely lost. Maybe Collier wasn’t willing or capable of fitting Seattle’s schemes with his skillset. Or maybe general manager John Schneider and head coach Pete Carroll just completely blew what they thought Collier would be.

It could have been that Schneider and Carroll thought Collier could be the next Michael Bennett. That would be a defensive tackle capable of supplying interior pass rush and versatile enough to line up at defensive end or on the interior. As it turns out, Collier wasn’t truly capable of being good at anything.

The 2019 NFL draft ended up having a lot of busts in the late first and second rounds. Seattle, however, seems to be a part of a few of them. Seattle also chose Marquise Blair in the second round and he is no longer with the team. Drew Lock is but he was a bust for the team that chose him, the Broncos. The issue with trading down and taking Collier at pick 30, besides the fact he isn’t good and has 3 sacks and 6 tackles for loss in four seasons, is Seattle could have had Montez Sweat if not for trading down. Sweat has 29 sacks in his four years so far and 37 tackles for loss.