Any ranking of the top 10 NFL general managers that excludes the Seattle Seahawks' John Schneider is either biased or does not have a long memory. Sure, the team has missed the playoffs in three of the last four seasons, but since Schneider became the GM in 2010, Seattle's success is nearly unrivaled.
Still, that did not keep Sportsnaut's Matt Johnson from producing a top-10 ranking of NFL GMs, and Schneider is nowhere to be seen. The argument here is not that Schneider should be a top-3 GM because others have had sustained success at a higher level than Seattle's general manager, but not in the top 10?
Johnson is saying that nearly a third of the league's GMs are better than Schneider, and there is no factual evidence to support that. In Schneider's 15 years with the Seahawks, the team has gone to two Super Bowls, winning one of them, won the NFC West five times (though not since 2020), and made the playoffs 10 times.
Seahawks' John Schneider gets left off a ranking of the top 10 NFL general managers
While Seattle hasn't been as successful since 2021, the team also hasn't been terrible. The Seahawks have had a winning record in each of the last three seasons and were the only team to win at least 10 games in 2024 and not make the playoffs.
This came after an offseason where Schneider gained full control over all roster moves and hired a new head coach. His choosing Mike Macdonald to replace Pete Carroll seems like a brilliant move now.
The 10 general managers ranked in the top 10 (we don't know where Schneider ranks overall because there are no honorable mentions so he could fall anywhere from 11 to 32) include, in ascending order, Nick Caserio of the Texans, Jason Licht of the Buccaneers, Brandon Beane of the Bills, Kyle Shanahan/John Lynch of the 49ers, Brian Gutekunst of the Packers, Brett Veach of the Chiefs, Eric DeCosta of the Ravens, Brad Holmes of the Lions, Les Snead of the Rams, and Howie Roseman of the Eagles.
Johnson puts a lot of stock in what general managers did over the years in the NFL draft, and this makes sense, but the players chosen by the Seahawks since 2010 are surely a better bunch than Caserio's Texans have had since 2021, when Caserio joined the team.
That is not meant as any slight toward Caserio because he has turned the Texans into a playoff team, but Schneider helped draft players such as Bobby Wagner, Richard Sherman, Devon Witherspoon, Russell Wilson, and many others.
He also hasn't been afraid to make tough moves, such as trading quarterback Geno Smith and wide receiver DK Metcalf this offseason. The team's culture should be better based on those moves that other GMs might not feel secure enough in their jobs to do.
Again, leaving Schneider off a GM ranking is simply recency bias, and while Seattle didn't make the playoffs last season, they had as many regular season victories as the Texans.
Other sites have also recently ranked general managers, and they haven't left Schneider off the list. NBC Sports' RotoPat ranked all 32 GMs, for instance, and Schneider comes in at number nine.