John Schneider was ahead of his time
Now everyone wants to be like the Rams, dealing first-round picks for stars, but general manager John Schneider was doing that before Matthew Stafford was even a twinkle in Les Snead's eye.
Have you heard about the latest trend in the NFL?
It’s where one team takes a piece of pure potential known as a first-round draft pick, shines it up it until it’s gleaming with sheer, unadulterated promise. Then, they shine that sucker directly into the eyes of another team, blinding it so badly that it will give up a bona fide superstar in exchange for this mystery pick.
Now, sometimes you’ll have to sweeten the pot, adding a few additional draft choices to pry loose that superstar, but it’s still worth it because you’re taking the guesswork out of the equation. Instead of drafting a handful of players and hoping one becomes a star, you’re getting a player you know is a star.
The Los Angeles Rams are the prototype for this style of team building. Actually, bro-totype might be the more appropriate term given how really, really good looking GM Les Snead seems to be, and when TheRinger.com trained a spotlight on this new trend, he was the man that was spotlighted.
“Snead seems to be converting other executives to his method of thinking.”
— Danny Heifetz, The Ringer
Well, I’m here to tell you that the Seahawks have been trading high-end picks for established players before it was considered cool. Matthew Stafford wasn’t even a glimmer in the eyes of the Rams’ front office. Hell, this was before the Rams were in Los Angeles. Back in 2013 the Seattle Seahawks forked over a first and a third-round pick for the right to make Percy Harvin really, really rich.
Two years later, the Seahawks gave up a first-round pick and center Max Unger for tight end Jimmy Graham and a fourth-round choice. Then there was Sheldon Richardson and Duane Brown in 2017, Jadeveon Clowney in 2018 and Jamal Adams two years ago when the Seahawks gave up two first-round choices and a third-rounder for the Jets safety.
Yet while the Rams get praised for their deals as setting a trend in the league, the same sort of trades have been pinpointed as the reason Seattle got high-centered in the NFL, good enough to consistently make the playoffs but a rung short of being great. It was that stagnation that spurred the quarterback’s desire for something different, and if that difference wasn’t going to come in the structure of Seattle’s offense, well, he wanted something different in terms of his address. And just like that, the Seahawks became one of those teams who had to take the promise of picks and a few players in exchange for that rarest of commodities in the NFL: a franchise quarterback.