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2013-2016 drafts
http://www.pro-football-reference.com/teams/sea/draft.htm
It's even worse than I thought. Bottom line is when you pay a small core of players (relative to rest of the league), you are counting on reloading with cheap young players to fill in the gaps and provide depth. Paying the core what they make provides even less margin for error relative to the rest of the league when it comes to the draft. The trades haven't helped. The front office hasn't been able to replicate the 2010-2012 drafts at even close to an acceptable level. I don't really blame Schneider/Carroll for the approach, but the two of them hit so many home runs so early on that they believed their own hype that the were geniuses to some extent I think.
This is 100% the reason for the downward trend the last two years. This is going to be a bad team in 2 years when the core is either past their prime or getting that last big contract somewhere else.
It's even worse than I thought. Bottom line is when you pay a small core of players (relative to rest of the league), you are counting on reloading with cheap young players to fill in the gaps and provide depth. Paying the core what they make provides even less margin for error relative to the rest of the league when it comes to the draft. The trades haven't helped. The front office hasn't been able to replicate the 2010-2012 drafts at even close to an acceptable level. I don't really blame Schneider/Carroll for the approach, but the two of them hit so many home runs so early on that they believed their own hype that the were geniuses to some extent I think.
This is 100% the reason for the downward trend the last two years. This is going to be a bad team in 2 years when the core is either past their prime or getting that last big contract somewhere else.
Comments
No.
Let's not pretend that Lockett hasn't been worse than last season either.
2015 looks great and 2016 looks good though. Clark, Lockett and Rawls could be a home run class if Lockett and Rawls can stay healthy (they both have been much worse than last year thanks to injuries). Throw in Glowinski who looks like he can be a league average starter at guard and you got four starters for a very good team, a couple with star potential out of that draft.
It's too early to evaluate 2016 but I really like it so far. Reed is a beast, Ifedi pisses me off but he's a rookie OL, I imagine he'll get better. Odhiambo has looked good in small doses. Prosise looks incredible (much like Lockett and Rawls, if he can stay healthy). Vannett and Jefferson look like solid pieces. Alex Collins fucking sucks and deserves to die. And you've got other undrafted guys like McEvoy and Powell and maybe even Pope who should be good contributors.
Overall I think 2016 goes down as a good class and 13-14 go down as outliers rather than a new trend.
I don't think it's likely at all that the team is bad in 2018. They're going to continue to have double digit wins for the next three or four years at least.
2014: Britt struggled until this year's move to C ... looks like he has found his home there. Richardson has been really hurt by the injury bug and never got going ... I can't figure that one out. I actually like Marsh for what he is ... good depth player on a roster. The rest of the draft was uninspiring.
The balance of the 2013 class has already played out their rookie contracts ... so hard to imagine how many of those players would still be here anyway if everything was great in those classes as we probably wouldn't have been able to extend them anyway. The 2014 class is hitting the same area ... so it is what it is at this point.
You have to understand to a certain degree with where the Hawks are is that they are looking for very specific things due to the makeup of their roster. The 2016 draft class was much better in terms of depth as they are looking to extend the run they are on to the next generation. The way this is set up they are basically set up to win with the current group from 2016-2018. The defense will basically need to be rebuilt in the draft over the next 2-3 drafts - they started that in the last class starting with Reed.
Even with the Patriots in their initial run, they had a lull before they rebuilt everything and kept it sustainable going forward. This team is in a position right now where they are shifting a bit from being a dominant defense to being more of an offensive team. But don't mistake the fact that there's still enough talent on this team to win at a high, high level.