Seahawks futures

The Seahawks have been getting a ton of positive press for their roster moves, but while casually browsing the 2011 draft and realizing just how much they extracted from it, I started to wonder what their drafting really netted them. For reference, here are their draft picks and notable undrafted rookie free agent signings since 2010. I've bolded names that played a significant role on the team, italicized are the subset still with the team, and placed an asterisk next to anyone who's made a Pro Bowl.

2010 (9 picks):
Russell Okung (1*), Earl Thomas (1*), Golden Tate (2*), Walter Thurmond (4), EJ Wilson (4), Kam Chancellor (5*), Anthony McCoy (6), Dexter Davis (7), Jameson Konz (7c)

2011 (9 picks):
James Carpenter (1), John Moffitt (3), KJ Wright (4), Kris Durham (4), Richard Sherman (5*), Mark LeGree (5), Byron Maxwell (6), Lazarious Levingston (7), Malcolm Smith (7c), Doug Baldwin (U)

2012 (10 picks):
Bruce Irvin (1), Bobby Wagner (2*), Russell Wilson (3*), Robert Turbin (4), Jaye Howard (4), Korey Toomer (5), Jeremy Lane (6), Winston Guy (6), JR Sweezy (7), Greg Scruggs (7), Jermaine Kearse (U)

2013 (11 picks):
Christine Michael (2), Jordan Hill (3), Chris Harper (4), Jesse Williams (5), Tharold Simon (5), Luke Willson (5), Spencer Ware (6), Ryan Seymour (7), Ty Powell (7), Jared Smith (7c), Michael Bowie (7c)

2014 (9 picks):
Paul Richardson (2), Justin Britt (2), Cassius Marsh (4), Kevin Norwood (4), Kevin Pierre-Louis (4), Jimmy Staten (5), Garrett Scott (6), Eric Pinkins (6), Kiero Small (7), Garry Gilliam (U)

2015 (8 picks):
Frank Clark (2), Tyler Lockett (3), Terry Poole (4), Mark Glowinski (4c), Tye Smith (5c), Obum Gwacham (6c), Kristjan Sokoli (6c), Ryan Murphy(7)

The first thing that pops out is the incredible success of their drafting from 2010-2012. Some teams go a decade without selecting 7 Pro Bowlers. I did a study spanning 2006-2010. That one focuses on just the 1st and 2nd round picks, but of those, no team had more than 3 such Pro Bowlers over 5 years (though the 2010 class were rookies still and hadn't had a chance to be selected). In this same vein, they have maximized their picks in the top rounds. All 7 such picks started, and 4 of them became Pro Bowlers. None of them was a bust.

The second thing that pops up is their quantity of picks. Teams average 8 picks per draft (with the added compensatories; there are 256 picks for 32 teams in each draft). The Seahawks have averaged 9.3. Once we get past the first couple rounds, there are way more misses than hits. The Seahawks seem to have embraced that and given themselves more chances to hit on players later in the draft.

The third thing that catches my eye is their huge decline in 2013 and 2014. I'll skip 2015 because there's no real data to judge players by, but they have virtually no production from the more recent drafts. When your entire draft boils down to a decent tight end or two mediocre offensive linemen, that's a wasted opportunity.

The fourth thing that catches my eye is how their picks have shifted to the later rounds. Part of that is a result of their success and the late picks that yields, mixed with their penchant for trading those picks to the Vikings. But ... it's hard to get serious impact players without 1st round picks, and they haven't had one of those in 3 years.

And finally, 4 of their 8 rookie picks this year were compensatories. This shows 2 things: that they've eroded their assigned picks and that they've lost a lot of free agents.

So where does this leave the Seahawks going forward? They've certainly picked many very good players. However, they've now had to sign many of those players to expensive new contracts and haven't been able to fill in the spots with cheap rookies well. There's a great core there, but I do wonder if they are due for some slightly rocky times ahead.


 

A path of destruction

Sometimes a player comes along who changes the fortunes of a team. Sometimes even two. Such is the story of Trent Richardson.

Richardson came into the league in 2012 as the top rated running back. He had been a beast at Alabama, finished 3rd in Heisman voting and had analysts making outrageous claims about being the next Jim Brown. Not everyone agreed. Notably, the original Jim Brown called him "ordinary", wondering what the big deal was if Richardson couldn't start ahead of Mark Ingram (another highly rated Alabama back), who was now middling with the Saints.

Cleveland was so enamored with him they traded up from 4th to 3rd to get him, swapping spots with a Vikings team already featuring Adrian Peterson. In other words, Minnesota wasn't taking Trent Richardson. It's possible someone else would have traded up for him but that's a long shot. The only other team close enough to pull the trigger was Jacksonville, and they already had Maurice Jones-Drew and problems everywhere else on their roster.

In the end, the Browns swapped spots with Minnesota at the cost of the 118th, 139th and 211th picks. For reference, those picks became:

Jarius Wright, WR, Arkansas (#2 receiver in catches, yards and TDs on team behind Greg Jennings)
Robert Blanton, S, Notre Dame (starting safety, tallied 106 tackles in 2014)
Scott Solomon, DE, Rice (struggling to make a roster)

The above is the opportunity cost of panicking. Richardson would have been there at 4, no doubt, and Cleveland could have netted 2 additional starters. That's a big miss. Playing the what-if card, Cleveland could have taken Alfred Morris at 139 and taken Ryan Tannehill, who has more upside and performance thus far than subsequent 1st-rounders Weeden and Manziel, combined, at 4 ... though given their track record, they probably would have taken Justin Blackmon and gotten even less in return.

To their credit, Cleveland recognized their mistake and jumped at a market opportunity when the Colts' retooling squad came calling. Jim Brown praised the move. How could anyone not? While Richardson played through injury in his rookie year and perhaps onlookers could be excused for giving him a pass on his 3.6 yards per carry, it became quickly evident to many that he was not the dynamic back we'd been promised. The Colts offered a 1st-round pick and the Browns took it. I don't know that the Browns expected that 1st rounder to only be the #26 pick, but it's better than Trent Richardson. They then promptly packaged the 83rd pick with it to move up for another headache: Johnny Manziel. Had they just taken Tannehill instead of Richardson, .... if only.

The Colts, in the meantime, got a running back they would dump by the end of the year and missed on opportunities to add Kelvin Benjamin or Bradley Roby. The Colts' pain was limited to one missed player.

The Browns kicked off a whole bad ripple by taking Richardson, one I could argue they still haven't recovered from.

The final chapter in this sad story is that Oakland signed Richardson to a deal with $600,000 guaranteed. He then became a first cut casualty. Oakland's mistake is a mere blip compared to the others ... and probably the last mistake an NFL team will make with Richardson.

Get your pass rush prospect here, hot off the presses!

The combine has brought us this year's crop of measurables, and they're pretty impressive! As a reminder, there is a remarkably simple subset of these numbers that almost all elite players share. Without further ado, here are this year's outside linebacker prospects:

Name	Position	40 dash	10yd split	Broad jump	Vertical
Randy Gregory	OLB	4.64	1.61	10'5	36
Vic Beasley	OLB	4.52	1.59	10'10	41
Alvin Dupree	OLB	4.56	1.60	11'6	42
Eli Harold	OLB	4.60	1.61	10'3	35
Shaq Thompson	OLB	4.64	1.69	9'9	33.5
Paul Dawson	OLB	4.93	1.68	9'1	28
Hauoli Kikaha	--	--	--	--	--
Nate Orchard	OLB	4.80	1.65	9'7	31.5
Kwon Alexander	OLB	4.55	1.58	10'1	36
Lorenzo Mauldin	OLB	4.85	1.68	9'4	32
Edmond Robinson	OLB	4.61	1.61	10'1	37
Shane Ray	DE	4.68	1.65	10'0	33
Dante Fowler	DE	4.60	1.59	9'4	32.5
Preston Smith	DE	4.74	1.60	10'1	34
Owamagbe Odighizuwa	DE	4.62	1.61	10'7	39
Mario Edwards	DE	4.84	1.76	10'0	32.5
Daniel Hunter	DE	4.57	1.57	--	--
Trey Flowers	DE	4.93	1.73	10'1	36.5

As alluded to above, this year's set has a lot of upside. Starting with the consensus-ish top 10 outside linebacker prospects, both Beasley and Dupree hit every level shared by most elite pass rushers. Randy Gregory, Eli Harold and Kwon Alexander meet all except for being near-misses on vertical jump. That's the top four prospects who measure very favorably, and another guy with serious upside. The second tier doesn't look as good: Thompson isn't terrible, but Dawson, Orchard and Mauldin all show serious deficiencies and should fall into the later rounds of the draft. Teams looking to take a mid-round flyer could look at Edmond Robinson who is just 1" away in vertical from a completely green results line.

The story is similar in the projected 4-3 DE group. While none of the top prospects are all green lights, Ray, Fowler and Smith all have very good measurable as a whole. In the lower range of the top prospects, Edwards and Flowers should fall. Odighizuwa is the lone all-green and could be primed for a Justin Houston-esque rise to eliteness. Or a Corey Lemonier-esque wallowing in mediocrity. Reminder: green lights don't mean a sure thing. Lack of green lights mean a sure not thing.

This group overall is interesting (or boring) because the top prospects all tested well. In many years there are a mix of highly-ranked guys who produced or meet combine criteria, but not both.

San Francisco earthquake

The rumor/news just hit that Patrick Willis is going to retire after 8 seasons as a 49er. Justin Smith appears likely to hang it up too. Smith is 35 and therefore well into the likely-to-retire zone. However, he still played at a high level last year.

Willis is just 30. He had season-ending toe surgery in 2014 and by his own assessment at the time had another 5-6 good years left in him. Either the toe issue is a lot more serious than he or anyone else thought, or he's decided that despite being able to, he's done playing.

My thoughts immediately jumped to Jim Harbaugh's exit. Certainly for a guy like Smith, feeling like the team is no longer a serious contender could be a deal-breaker. I don't pretend to know all the psychology involved, but I wonder if Willis was demotivated by Harbaugh's exit to the point where he just didn't want to play anymore. Despite any of his personal abrasiveness, no one can deny that Harbaugh was a coach and winner of the highest caliber. People respond to results and are willing to overlook a lot in someone who leads them to victory. By all accounts, the hiring of Tomsula to replace Harbaugh was a curious choice, perhaps more aligned with getting someone willing to plug the company line, so to speak. I wonder if players, who would already have been familiar with him, were not duly impressed.

There are also reports that Frank Gore is on his way out to Philadelphia. He's a late-career running back with something still left in the tank ... does going to Philly mean he feels he has a better chance at a good season there? It could be just about the money too, of course.

By the time this off-season is done, how many iconic 49ers will be gone? And just how much of that is because Harbaugh was ousted?

Eagles continue fleecing ways

Sources are reporting that the Eagles and Bills have agreed to trade LeSean McCoy and Kiko Alonso, seemingly straight up.

While on the surface the Bills are getting an electric running back, you've gotta figure the Eagles know when they have a depreciating or overvalued asset. Anecdotal evidence includes trading Kolb for a 2nd rounder and DRC a few years ago, and unloading Donovan McNabb, who was clearly a shell of his former self by that time. As fantasy owners no doubt noticed, McCoy had a down year last year (not just by TD numbers, but also in average rush; his receiving targets were way down as well). An optimist will simply say that he doesn't play the same role in Chip Kelly's offense, but let's not forget how dominant he was just a year before, in the same offense.

The Eagles get an inside linebacker who, at his best, is a perennial Pro Bowler. He's coming off ACL surgery so he's technically a risk, but the ACL recovery rate has improved. It's no longer a multi-year, career-threatening injury. Most guys are out one year, then return as before. Since Alonso should be ready for camps and preseason, he's not damaged per the Eagles point of view. However, trading for an injured player is a risk, no matter how much medicine has reduced that risk. This is further anecdotal evidence that McCoy is not the player he was in 2011-13.

Let's also consider that the Bills couldn't run the ball with anyone last year. The explanation is simple: no one respected their quarterbacks to beat them with the pass. That hasn't changed. In a league where unheralded backs make impact all over the place, it's implied that the environment (line quality, quarterback, playcalling) is as much of a factor as the back himself. McCoy is unlikely to singlehandedly reverse all those factors working against him.

Finally, McCoy is a rapidly depreciating asset. Conventional wisdom holds that he has just a couple more decent years left in him. The window of greatness could already be closed, or he could still be potentially effective for 3-4 years, but it's hard to know and the latter is the best-case scenario (and again, he won't be maximized by the Bills as they currently sit). Alonso, in the meantime, should give the Eagles 7-10 really good years.

If Buffalo has a plan to revamp their offense and maximize McCoy, great. However, that plan likely would have worked with a much cheaper back as well, without sending away an impact player, who as a bonus is still on his rookie deal. While letting him hit FA could be risky and if they didn't want to pony up cash in 2 years they would get nothing in return, I predict that McCoy and his salary will not have the positive impact the Bills are hoping for.

Remeber that thing I said?

About the playoffs not really working and still leading to too much contention?

This bowl season has already highlighted the problem with the new format (it's exactly just deferred it one step further): TCU's dominant win from the #6 spot (but not in the playoff) combined with FSU's faceplant (and the reluctance of voters all year to recognize them as the top team) should lead to questions about who should have been in the playoffs.

The inherent issue with a playoff system is that once teams are in, nothing else matters but winning going forwards. If we accept the premise that "every game counts" in college (which I'm willing to work with), then a short playoff completely counteracts it. Sure it matters that a team makes it in, but it allows a team that shouldn't really be in the "best team" conversation to get hot at just the right time.

Mixing subjective cutoffs with a short-list for the playoff doesn't work exactly because sometimes the 3rd or 4th best team shouldn't even be in the conversation, and other times it's murky beyond 4. For example, imagine if USC-Texas had been subjected to a playoff. Even if both teams emerge as winners of their semifinal game, there's a risk of injury, etc, for what amounts to a formality. And, if either of those teams had lost, few people would accept the other team as a legit candidate.

This year was murky beyond the 4. FSU was the only winless team but they kept wining in dramatic fashion. Some weren't even sure they belonged in the playoff. In retrospect, the highly competitive game between Ohio State and Alabama, mixed with the blowout of FSU by Oregon validates this thinking. And this is exactly the problem: the 3rd-6th spots often have murkiness in them (consider how to order the top teams from the BCS conferences, even) and by imposing a playoff on a subset we create an artificial barrier.

Since a 64-team playoff (where any reasonable contender is included) is not an option, let's embrace the murkiness in stages: play the BCS bowls, then vote on the top 2 teams to play in the championship. The top teams would be playing each other. We'd probably conclude that Oregon-Ohio State is the right pair this way as well, but it opens the door for a team like TCU to prove themselves against top-flight competition. Or, keep the bowl-conference affiliations. Suppose we'd have had:

#1 Alabama vs #5 Baylor in the Sugar Bowl
#2 Oregon vs #4 Ohio State in the Rose Bowl
#3 Florida State vs #6 TCU in the Orange Bowl
#7 Mississippi State vs #11 Kansas State in the Peach Bowl
#8 Michigan State vs #12 Georgia Tech in the Cotton Bowl
#9 Ole Miss vs #10 Arizona in the Fiesta Bowl

We can debate all we want how these games would have turned out, of course. Realistically, the Peach, Cotton and Fiesta Bowl will not show us anything about the national title conversation. Ideally TCU would be placed into the not-quite-aligned Orange Bowl and the winners from those 3 bowls end up in the national title game conversation. Style points still matter and everyone with any reasonable claim to the game is still alive. It's a game of murkiness, but a game we should embrace.

NCAA football playoff

2014 is the inaugural year of the college football playoff. It's finally here, a fair path to determining the top team in the nation!

So what was wrong with the old system? Opponents point to the somewhat arbitrary choice at the end of the year for determining the top 2 teams. In some years, there's a clear top team and a handful of nexts. In other years, there's a clear top 2. Yet again in some years, there are more than 2 contenders for legitimate number 1 status. Or there are undefeated teams from one of the other conferences who have a potential claim as well. It was simply unfair to always pick two teams when it wasn't clear which those two teams are. Sometimes they are vindicated (ex: Florida leapfrogging Michigan to #2 in 2007, then trouncing Ohio St), other times they look foolish (ex: USC destroying Oklahoma 55-19 in 2005 while Auburn was left out of the game). A playoff solves this because more of the top teams are in, and they play it out. With enough rounds (ex: NCAA basketball) it's fair because all the legitimate contenders are included.

So why hasn't there been a playoff before? The argument against it in football was that the extra games present too much wear and tear on the players, as well as force them to miss too much school.

The current playoff increases the arbitrary pool of eligible contenders to 4, and adds one extra game for the two teams who progress to the championship. While it may not be entirely likely, a team who has earned being one of the best could be knocked out in a bad game by a team who's arbitrarily included in the 4 (ex: USC, Oklahoma, Auburn in 2004, but did Cal or Texas really belong in that group?). It devalues the position a team has worked for all season; reducing the "every game counts" mantra we keep attaching to the sport. Also, what about teams like Hawaii from 2007, and the Boise State and TCU teams from similar years. They'd continue to be left out, forever making us wonder "what if?"

I propose an alternative:
Let's keep the BCS system similar to how we've had it, where approximately the top 12 teams make it to BCS bowl games. There's no preference for one bowl being "the championship", we just pair up top teams from various conferences. We let the BCS bowls play out. Then, we do one final ranking. The top two teams play once more for the championship.

Why it works:
Using the proposed system ensures that every team's ranking is calibrated by a matchup against another top team, from another conference. This addresses the gaps in quality matchups by those in lower conferences, and alleviates conference bias (ahem, SEC). It lets us re-evaluate if season rankings have just happened in conference bubbles and gives the non-BCS teams a chance to show how good they are (or aren't).

Why it's tricky:
The current system has the advantage of giving a more concentrated set of fans early warning that their team may be in the championship game. However, there's still the matter of people waiting to see that their team actually made it. It's not really any different from the pros where we only find out 2 weeks before who actually made it to the Super Bowl. Ticket planning is the only downside I can think of, and I'm not sure it's any worse than what the current playoff system creates anyways.

With the current system, some team is going to feel slighted at #5, or some clearly worse resume #4 will cause an upset. I think my system is better.