Seattle sticks to the program
Pete Carroll's first words after the trade of Russell Wilson give us an idea of the stakes in this week's draft as Seattle fully turns the page on the personnel from its title-winning team.
The NFL draft begins on Thursday, which was one of my least favorite events to cover as a reporter. This has nothing to do with the actual event itself or its importance in the contemporary NFL, but how the event is covered.
It is evaluated as a contest unto itself with the results appraised in terms of wins and losses in the form of letter grades. It should be obvious why affixing an evaluation to a player who has not performed a minute in the professional ranks is stupid, but just in case, here’s my analogy: It’s akin to evaluating a restaurant based entirely upon the groceries that are brought into the kitchen rather than the meals that are produced in it. The raw ingredients are the starting point as opposed to something to be evaluated.
I do not know who the Seahawks will pick in this week’s draft in which they hold three of the first 41 picks, and once they do make those selections I do not plan to tell you rather they were right or wrong. In fact, I intrinsically distrust anyone who does so with any amount of conviction. What the draft does do, though, is show you the kinds of bets Seattle is making about its future. It defines the stakes, especially this year, in the wake of trading Russell Wilson. This is the franchise’s most important draft since the one in which they chose him, a fact that became eminently clear when I listened back to what Pete Carroll had to say.
Only, I wasn’t listening to the press conference the coach conducted with John Schneider last week to discuss the draft itself. No, I listened back to the press conference that Carroll and Schneider conducted on March 16, the day the trade of Wilson was officially announced. And it was fitting in some senses that in the press conference to announce Wilson’s trade, Carroll spoke for 7 minutes, 37 seconds without interruption before he mentioned Wilson’s name. This was about Carroll’s program, not a player.