All-new coaches. All-new systems. Yet one vital piece is the same for this Seahawks draft
New head coach.
Almost two dozen new assistant coaches.
Entirely new systems on offense, defense and special teams.
But ... it’s the same ol’ scouts and player personnel directors leading these otherwise remade Seahawks into the 2024 NFL draft that begins Thursday.
Those scouts and personnel guys will be doing the same thing during this draft as they have for the 14 previous drafts that John Schneider has been Seattle’s general manager above them.
Asked what the scouts’ roles are inside the Seahawks’ draft room during the seven rounds that will run into next weekend, team vice president of player personnel Trent Kirchner said Thursday: “John yelling at us to find more trade partners.”
Schneider has famously traded an original first-round draft choice in 10 of the last 12 Seattle drafts.
He has the 16th pick in this year’s first round.
As for all the new, Seattle hired former Baltimore Ravens defensive coordinator Mike Macdonald in January. He replaced Pete Carroll, the Seahawks’ 14-year coach and ultimate football authority. The team fired Carroll two days after the Seahawks finished last season out the playoffs for just the third time in 12 years.
Macdonald, the league’s youngest coach at 36, has 21 new Seahawks assistant coaches. That includes first-time NFL offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb (from the University of Washington), first-time defensive coordinator Aden Durde and first-time pro special-teams coordinator Jay Harbaugh.
They are working with Seattle’s long-time scouting and personnel chiefs: Their boss Schneider, plus assistant GM Nolan Teasley, vice president of player personnel Trent Kirchner, senior director of player personnel Matt Berry and Hineline.
Schneider has had Teasley with him on the Seahawks’ personnel side for 11 years. Kirchner has been with the Seahawks for 14 years, since 2010 when Schneider arrived with Carroll to run the franchise. Berry joined the Seahawks in 2008, pre-Schneider and Carroll, as an area scout. He became a national scout in 2014 then the team’s director of college scouting in 2015. Hineline began with the Seahawks as an intern 17 years ago.
That continuity comes in handy this time of year. Even with all-new coaches they are linking draft prospects to for the first time.
“We’re really fortunate, to have been together, most of us up on the stage, over 10 years, and the group overall,” Berry said. “We know each other really well. We know, when we’re talking about certain things having to do with makeup of a prospect, what guys mean. When we’re talking about talent, scheme, fit, we’re able to talk the same language. That’s a huge advantage.
“It’s been an advantage with us as a group to be able to convey that to the coaching staff, as well, so that we’re all talking the same language so that we can achieve alignment as we get to the finish line here next week.”
Yet there is next-to-no familiarity with Macdonald and those coaches, specifically the type of player they want for the new Seahawks schemes they are going to employ.
“It’s going to be our personnel staff learning these coaches, understanding what’s important to them — and letting them have the trust in our system and the processes that we’ve developed over the past 15 years,” Schneider said.
Teasley doesn’t see this as an issue for Seattle’s scouting staff with Macdonald, compared to the previous 14 drafts with Carroll and knowing his ways so intricately.
“I would say that there’s only so much football,” Teasley, Schneider’s assistant GM, said. “There’s going to be some intricacies and some changes to scheme and system on both sides of the ball. But, again, there’s only so much football.
“So you’re really looking for productive, smart, tough, reliable, fast, physical football players regardless. Again, you’re getting into the intricacies, getting into the specifics, and that doesn’t take long. That’s just a pretty natural conversation.
“So, yeah, I don’t see that being an issue. We’re looking forward to a little bit of the change here and there. But I don’t think it’s going to be a stark contrast. But it’s really positive and it’s really exciting moving forward.”
NIL and transfer portal change draft scouting
The coaches aren’t the only things new for the Seahawks scouts and personnel folks.
Used to be — way back in the dark ages of, oh, three years ago — players drafted into the NFL weren’t just realizing a dream. They were realizing their first huge bags of cash.
The top pick in the 2021 NFL draft, Clemson quarterback Trevor Lawrence, earned a rookie base salary negotiated by the players’ union through the league’s collective bargaining agreement of $660,000 from the Jacksonville Jaguars. He also collected a signing bonus of $24.1 million up front three years ago.
The unanimously expected top pick in the 2024 draft next week is USC quarterback Caleb Williams, to the Chicago Bears. Williams has already earned an estimated $10 million the last two years — for playing college football.
At the lowest end of this year’s draft, in which the Seahawks have the 16th choice and seven picks total, players selected in the seventh and final round will get slotted into a four-year rookie contract. It will be worth a total of $4.09 million at the bottom of round seven to $4.13 million at the top. Those will come with first-year base salaries in the low six figures, plus signing bonuses.
Some of those players, and even some undrafted rookie free agents who will sign deals with teams immediately after the draft ends Saturday, April 27, have earned six figures in college.
That’s how Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) in college football — plus and the 6-year-old transfer portal that coupled with NIL money is basically college free agency — have changed the NFL draft.
“I think it just gives us more information as we’re evaluating makeup and character,” Berry said Thursday. “It’s the landscape we’re in.
“Rosters are constantly changing. So if we’re really trying to figure out a person’s makeup, you’re depending on the relationships (team scouts) have in the school. If the player’s only been there six months, your information is incomplete when you talk to who you talk to. So it’s just one more element to our evaluation..
Another one now for Seahawks scouts?
“How they handle money,” Berry said. “Is it an issue? Is it not an issue?
“It can give us a lot of insight on how they’re going to be once they get an NFL contract.”
More college visits to more schools
Like most pro sports teams, the Seahawks divide their scouts’ areas of responsibility by geographic regions of the country.
Before, scouts visited a college campus to evaluate a player in his practices and games, and to investigate his backgrounds. Schneider has said Seattle’s scouts have been known to interview a university’s janitors, dorm residence advisors and teachers — from college and even high school — to vet a player’s character and experiences.
The transfer portal and the NIL cash offers from other programs that were behind many if not most of the 1,000 college football players that entered the portal this week have been a multiplier to an NFL scout’s work. Now, he often goes to two and three schools to investigate a player with in-person interviews of those he associated with before he transferred.
“I think you have to,” Hineline said. “We’re trying to figure out as much as we can on these guys so we get it right in the end, as a group.
The positive thing about the transfer portal ... is the guy might have been at a West Coast school and then he goes to the Southeast, and the (Seahawks scout) on the West Coast (Josh Graff) probably knows that guy better because he was there two or three years sometimes. So he’ll have more insight (than the team’s Southeast scout), so we’ll lean on him.
“Those guys, he might be able to go back on a guy from UCLA that he did, you know, three or four years ago that’s now at Florida. It’s just a relationship thing more than anything. It’s something that, you know, that’s ingrained in our guys. They do a great job with that.”
So many college football players, particularly quarterbacks, transfer so often now, and particularly for their last college seasons before they enter the NFL draft, the Seahawks assign scouting and player personnel interns to track them all.
How? On social media, through college players’ Instagram, X (Twitter) and other pages.
Yes, scouting has changed.
“That’s a process in itself,” Hineline said of tracking all the college transfers for a draft class. “(Senior college scouting coordinator) Kirk Parrish has been on that. Our interns.
“It’s a constant evolution, right? These guys can transfer a couple times during the year. So it’s just keeping track of where guys are going. Got a pretty good idea with social media and whatnot. You can tell right away who’s going in the portal and who’s not pretty fast in that process.”
What’s left for the Seahawks’ draft process?
The Seahawks’ scouting leaders are finishing their 2024 draft process this weekend.
From there, it’s small tweaks to the team’s board by Schneider and Macdonald, and to Seattle’s second draft board predicting what the other 31 teams need and will do in each round. The Seahawks have had good success nailing those predictions guiding their moves under Schneider.
Then it’s watching it unfold and reacting — and making calls about more possible trades — beginning Thursday afternoon and running into signing undrafted free agents next Saturday night through Sunday and the following week.
“We’ll meet with the coaches Friday and Saturday (of this week),” Berry said. “We’ll get back together Sunday.
“Monday, Tuesday, I think John is with Mike, and they’re finalizing it. Then we’re on the phone a lot. We’re trying to figure out the landscape of the league, trying to button up the rest of the process.
“This is the third time we’ve gone through the board as a group so a lot of the questions we had coming out of February have been answered, and we’re trying to get consensus and alignment throughout the building from scouting to coaching to analytics, and we’re all moving forward as one.
“And that’s really the goal of our process.”
This story was originally published April 19, 2024 at 5:00 AM.
