What else Seahawks do at the combine, what makes this year’s unique, what truly matters
The Seahawks do one thing as much as scout at the NFL combine.
They learn.
Coach Pete Carroll, general manager John Schneider and Seattle’s player evaluators will have their ears as well as eyes wide open this week in Indianapolis at the league’s annual scouting extravaganza. It’s how they’ve become very good at collecting valuable intelligence across the NFL.
They learn in Indiana from talking to other teams and from scuttlebutt around the combine what positions other clubs are targeting, what players—college and veterans—other teams are looking at, and how desperate those clubs may get to acquire them.
What, you think the Seahawks trading their first-round choice in eight consecutive drafts has been entirely by accident?
Carroll, Schneider and their assistants use the combine to refine their draft boards. They keep two.
One is theirs. It has the players they have scouted and slotted into rounds they feel those prospects fit.
Seattle’s second draft board is a projection of what the other 31 NFL teams will do over the seven rounds of the draft. It’s the strategy board. Its how the Seahawks find the teams to do all that trading they do.
And they’ve gotten good at it, both in the accuracy of their league-wide mock board and using it to make trades. The Seahawks have made 17 deals in the last four drafts.
“That’s something that we pride ourselves on, not just this (draft) weekend, but throughout the whole process,” Schneider said last April following his last wheeling and dealing in the 2019 draft.
“We were just talking about trying to know the landscape of what’s happening in the National Football League,” Schneider said. “There’s a lot of work that goes into it.”
Carroll has said in recent years he marvels at how accurate Schneider’s and his personnel staff’s league-wide draft board has been.
“It’s knowledge of the other factors from the other teams, you know, who’s calling the shots at other places and the needs of other teams,” the coach said. “And, you know, processing all of that stuff.”
The gathering of a lot of that stuff accelerates this week at the combine. It comes from conversations with colleagues, counterparts and agents. Those happen away from the television cameras and player events, in the hallways and concourses of the Indianapolis Colts’ Lucas Oil Stadium. They happen while talking to league people they see going to meetings and interviews in the adjoining Indiana Convention Center. They learn from players’ agents. Agents are always at the combine; they have an annual certification meeting at it each year, inside the convention center.
Last year, the Seahawks made eight trades involving draft choices, to go from a league-low four picks to a bountiful 11 choices in the 2019 draft. They traded down in round one, as usual, before selecting defensive end L.J. Collier.
This year Seattle owns the 27th choice in the first round, then two choices in round. The second of their to second-round picks is from trading pass rusher Frank Clark to Kansas City last spring.
All last year’s trading netted the Seahawks six choices in all over the first four rounds of this 2020 draft, and nine picks in all.
You can bet your 12th Man flag the Seahawks are going to make more trades in April’s draft. A lot of the groundwork for those deals will get done this week in Indiana.
The NFL CBA
This year’s combine has a unique backdrop for the Seahawks, and every other team.
The league’s collective bargaining agreement is the NFL’s hottest topic as this combine begins. Team owners last week approved a proposed agreement on a new CBA, to replace the one that ends after 2020.
It takes 24 of the 32 team owners to approve a CBA. The latest approval reportedly was not unanimous; some owners who voted for it did so with “doubts” about it, according to ESPN.
The new proposed CBA the owners approved includes an increase of the players’ share of league revenues from 47 to 48 percent. Many players and leaders within their NFL Players’ Association have asserted for years the new CBA needs to be closer to a 50-50 split of league revenues.
The most contentious part of the new CBA owners are endorsing is their proposal to go to a 17-game regular season. That’s one more than the current league schedule. The players are reportedly “majorly divided” over that.
The NFLPA’s executive council last week voted 6-5 to not recommend to its players the CBA the owners approved. The executive council said its concern was the increase to 17 games.
The NFL is also proposing an increase of one playoff team in each conference, from six to seven playoff teams each in the NFC and AFC.
The players representatives for all 32 teams postponed a scheduled vote with the union last Friday on the proposed new CBA. ESPN reported the owners have agreed to meet with the players Tuesday at the combine in Indianapolis, “but it’s unclear whether that meeting will result in further discussion about terms or whether the owners will tell the players to take the current one or leave it.”
The team player representatives are planning to hold the postponed vote on the CBA after meeting with the league. Then the NFLPA player reps plan to hold the vote they’d hoped to hold Friday. Eventually, all rank and file members of the union will get the opportunity to vote.
A new CBA is considered approved by the players if a simple majority of those who vote say yes. Owners have said if the players don’t approve the new CBA by the time the 2020 league year begins March 18, they will play this year under the final year of the expiring CBA.
The most important combine events
The league and its NFL Network incessantly tracks the combine’s 40-yard dash and three-cone drills. They hype the players’ vertical leaps and long jumps down to tiny fractions of inches. Even the prospects’ bench-pressing draws a roaring crowd and yelling public-address announcer to the Indiana Convention Center for a nationally televised show.
But decision-makers for just about every team will tell you the most important events at the combine are the medical evaluations and formal interviews with players.
This year, the NFL has reduced the formal interviews each team gets with prospects to 45 sessions of 18 minutes each. That’s down from 60 interviews of 15-minutes each previously.
The Seahawks have made, and gotten, quite the impressions from their formal interviews of players at recent combines.
Two years ago in Indianapolis they engaged in an odd staring contest with University of Texas punter Michael Dickson from Australia.
“I mean I had to do a staring contest and I had to see how long I could stare without blinking,” Dickson said at the 2018 combine. “I had a couple of attempts. I tried a few techniques, looking away from the light, trying to block any sort of wind coming into the eyes. That was a weird process.”
How long did it take before Dickson blinked in the staring contest?
“The first time I did terrible. I only lasted for 14 seconds,” he said. “But my third time I had figured out a technique to look around the room just to get your eyes a little watery, I guess.”
The Seahawks were so impressed Dickson didn’t blink they traded up that spring to draft him. Dickson then became their All-Pro and Pro Bowl punter as a rookie.
Last February in Indianapolis, the Seahawks arranged to have one of their formal meetings with prospects be with DK Metcalf. One of the Seahawks’ staffers went out to him in the hall and had Metcalf enter the interview room at the Crowne Plaza hotel without his shirt on.
Metcalf did as requested.
“Kind of pissed me off, so I took my shirt off, too,” the 68-year-old Carroll joked later. “Not too long.”
“Too long,” Schneider interjected.
Metcalf, Carroll and the entire interview room at the combine roared.
Whaddya know? The Seahawks traded back into the end of the second round last spring to draft Metcalf. The hulking wide receiver then became one of the best rookies in the NFL in 2019.
This story was originally published February 24, 2020 at 7:15 AM.
