Originally Posted by BishopMVP
I think drafting is more luck than most want to admit. Maybe the Seahawks are slightly better than other organizations at those later picks, and slightly smarter in chasing extra mid-round picks, but results like the 2010-2012 run of picks are unsustainable for any team. Even that strategy of accumulating extra mid-round picks is pretty much exactly out of the NE playbook, and we have seen NE go through multi-year stretches of "good" then "bad" drafting, then back to "good" the last xouple years. Plus the Hawks also made a pretty bad short-term gamble on Percy Harvin, and even if they did escape his huge cap hits they still gave up a 1 & a 3 to do it, plus a 7 while getting back a 6 or a 4. (I know it's not fair to cherry-pick draft picks, but that could've been DeAndre Hopkins/Travis Frederick and Jerick McKinnon/Bryan Stork).
Seahawks future success relies on 3 things
- Now that Wilson will be paid, does he make the leap to elite level, or stay at above-average starter level. The latter won't kill them, but Wilson making the leap to elite is the easiest way to ensure a 10 year run of success.
- The stars they give big money to (Thomas, Sherman, Wright, Chancellor, Avril, Bennett, Okung, Unger) continuing to play at a high level.
- Finding more underpaid stars in the draft. And it's not just about finding players that eventually can start, but about finding ones that can start early so you have those 2-3 guarantees below-market seasons. Golden Tate looks like a pretty great 60th pick, but he took 2 seasons before really contributing, so the Hawks didn't get much surplus value out of him.
It's not a secret formula, and they're set up as well as anyone going forward, but the idea that they'll definitely be the favorites for the next 3-5 years ignores common sense and the history of every NFL team in the salary cap era. Having an elite QB can at least put you in the playoff conversation every year, but no team can sustain a depth and talent advantage cross the board.
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