As John Schneider gets ready to run his first draft without Pete Carroll at his side, plenty of fans think everything is suddenly going to change – because of course Carroll was pulling all of the strings and was the reason the Seahawks were in the bottom third of the league in drafting success over the last decade. Schneider debunked that idea earlier this month on his radio show, confirming Carroll had the power to “put his foot down” but he “rarely, rarely, rarely did that.” “John was in control on draft day and will continue to be,” said Nolan Teasley, Seattle’s assistant GM. “The process ..read more

John Schneider could have afforded a top free-agent guard, but it’s a position he thinks is overpaid – and now he absolutely has to draft a guy who is capable of pushing for a starting spot as a rookie. Seemingly 90% of mock drafts have him doing exactly that with the 16th pick, taking Washington star Troy Fautanu. Mike Macdonald wants to be “a physical football team” and Fautanu certainly would help that happen. But Schneider also thinks guards “get overdrafted,” and he recently signed former Jets starter Laken Tomlinson. So, unless Macdonald and Ryan Grubb (Fautanu’s OC at UW) really want S ..read more

Amid the hullabaloo by some overly nostalgic fans about Mike Macdonald’s rearranging of the VMAC, his players seem to get it. They know Pete Carroll’s missing hoop and the temporarily blank walls are a metaphor for a clean slate, a new beginning. They also know the expectations are much higher now and being delivered in a more defined, exacting way than Carroll and his staff were doing over the last few years. It’s all as it should be, and the smart ones – players and fans – understand that. The players who don’t won’t be around very long. And that’s as it should be, too. The core leaders of ..read more

In Pete Carroll’s last season in Seattle, his platitudes and vague descriptors about what needed to be fixed on the defense had worn super thin and it was so obvious that he really had no idea how he was going to fix the weakest part of his team after years of failing. That’s why it is so refreshing to hear Mike Macdonald quietly but confidently talk about how elite his defense is going to be. He outlines it so clearly that you can just see it happening — and not taking long either. Whether he is talking about how expectations lead to Super Bowl wins, about his motto of Chasing Edges or about ..read more

“Guys get overdrafted at (guard) and, in my opinion, they get overpaid.” – John Schneider on Seattle Sports 710 The NCAA tournament begins this week, and Seahawks fans are enduring their annual March madness over John Schneider’s disinterest in building a strong offensive line. Schneider just doesn’t like to spend on the unit. In eight of the last 10 years, the Hawks have ranked 26th or worse in money paid along the line, according to OverTheCap. This year, just like 2016, the Seahawks have the cheapest offensive line in the NFL. And it very likely will remain that way. The situation is so ..read more

As fans across social media debate the Sam Howell trade, perhaps the best way to frame the discussion is thus: Did the Seahawks just trade for Matt Hasselbeck or did they trade for Charlie Whitehurst? In other words, did they add a potential franchise passer or a second-tier backup? Or maybe something in between? A few weeks ago, we set the table for the transition from holdover quarterback Geno Smith to a new QB who becomes Mike Macdonald’s guy. In that post, we retraced how Mike Holmgren landed Hasselbeck in Year 3 (2001) and how John Schneider took a swing on Whitehurst in his first year ..read more

By the end of the first day of the new league year, the Seahawks had used over $35 million in salary cap space to address four of their six positional needs – and they still didn’t look like they had improved their roster. After free agents flew off the shelves in the first two days, we thought John Schneider might be preparing to make a trade to improve his roster. Instead, he stuck to his typical MO and overpaid role players who gradually ate up almost all of Seattle’s cap space. There certainly were good moves. The Hawks accomplished their top priority: keeping Leonard Williams. They also ..read more

John Schneider has not been very lucky with a lot of his big trade acquisitions, but he is betting – as he had to – that Leonard Williams will become the second successful extension out of the five he has made since 2010. The Seahawks sent a 2024 second-round pick and 2025 fifth-rounder to the New York Giants for Williams last October, and they managed to re-sign him on Monday to a three-year deal worth $64.5 million. Williams is the eighth player Schneider has acquired using at least one Day 1 or Day 2 pick. In 2010, he swapped seconds and sent a third to San Diego for Charlie Whitehurst ..read more

Jamal Adams’ long anticipated release this week ended the worst trade/signing of John Schneider’s 14-year tenure in Seattle. We actually had written off Adams 18 months ago, when he suffered a season-ending quadriceps injury in the 2022 season opener against Russell Wilson and the Broncos. So, for us, his release this week was just the official word on what we expected to happen ever since that Monday night game. This is the result some feared from the day in July 2020 that Schneider sent two first-rounders and more to the Jets for the All-Pro safety. Those people hated the trade and dreaded ..read more

Just a few days after Geno Smith’s 2024 salary became guaranteed, the Seahawks made a mildly surprising move to give him even more guaranteed money, converting his March roster bonus into a pay-now bonus to add $4.8 million in cap space. Why did they decide to pay the $9.6 million now, three weeks before the league year begins and 25 days before it was technically due? On his weekly radio show, John Schneider said it was just a cap maneuver that was baked into Smith’s contract, something the team could do at any time. But why at this time? The GM did not answer that, but the obvious thought i ..read more