The NFL's supplemental draft was once kind of a fun thing. Players were chosen there, if teams chose to take them, instead of the normal NFL draft, if something had gone awry with their college careers. It gave players a second chance at being drafted.
The supplemental draft won't be held again in 2025 (the last time it was held was in 2019), the league announced, and this might be good news for the Seattle Seahawks. That is because, well before anyone connected to the current team was hired, Seattle made a complete mess of the 1987 edition.
To be fair, the Seahawks thought they were getting a winner when they took linebacker Brian Bosworth as a supplemental pick. He was big and seemingly fast, and played with a lot of swagger. There were red flags, however, such as Bosworth being kicked off his University of Oklahoma team and not having the sense of urgency to declare for the regular draft.
NFL eschews the kind of draft that gave the Seattle Seahawks Brian Bosworth
That didn't stop the Seahawks from choosing Bosworth in the first round (teams can pass on players in each round and still choose a player later). He had promise, even with the red flags. And after being chosen, he started 12 games as a rookie for a Seattle team that wasn't awful.
Seattle finished second in the AFC West (yes, AFC West) that season at 9-6, and lost to the Houston Oilers in the first round of the playoffs.
But Bosworth never could stay healthy for long. The 12 games in 1987 would be the most games he would ever play in a season. He played in only 10 in 1988, and just two in 1989, and he would never play again. His talent wasn't really the issue, although he proved he would never perform at a Pro Bowl level. He could have been a solid supplemental choice, but he ended up being a wasted one.
To make matters worse for Bosworth, his most memorable play was one he likely would not want to remember. On Monday Night Football on November 30, 1987, rookie Bo Jackson of the Los Angeles Raiders took a handoff at the two-yard line and literally ran over Bosworth for a touchdown.
Did taking Brian Bosworth in the supplemental draft in 1987 make any difference to the future of the Seattle Seahawks? Not really. The team would enter the 1990s by making some awful choices at quarterback in multiple NFL drafts. Unless Bosworth was somehow a hidden gem at QB, his addition to Seattle was ultimately, and sadly, meaningless.