Predicting the first 17 picks: Expect the unexpected
Nobody knows who the Seahawks will draft on Thursday, including John Schneider
As a fan of “the dream theory”, my wife asked me how likely it is that the Seahawks will draft receiver Matthew Golden on Thursday, and the answer is the perfect opportunity to explain why it couldn’t hurt to go with your gut when making predictions like these ones:
None of the prospects could possibly have a better than 7.68% chance of being drafted by Seattle with the 18th overall pick, so nobody I pick is going to end up as more than a “shot in the very dimly lit room”.
Seahawks trade up for Shedeur Sanders?! This week’s Seahawks Mock Draft Roundup and biggest surprises is a must-read for fans!
Because not only are there 17 picks ahead of the Seahawks on Thursday, there will be surprises at almost all of those selections except for maybe 1, 2, and 3. Every time a mock draft gets one pick wrong, they’re actually getting TWO picks wrong (example: If the Patriots throw a curveball and take Tyler Warren at 4, that also means that the mock drafts will be wrong when they get to the team they thought was going to pick Warren) and the winding path of the draft has too many twists and turns to be confident about pick 18…
Assuming the Seahawks even stay at 18.
Even John Schneider can only guess what’s going to happen on Thursday and he said as much when Byron Murphy II fell to Seattle in 2024:
So when I write that Matthew Golden’s name came up in a dream (which it never did, I only dreamt of chasing GOLD a la Indiana Jones while simultaneously following what was happening in the draft, as a modern day treasure hunter is wont to do), perhaps the odds of that guess being right are not much worse than if I only went off of analytics, film, and scheme fits.
I’ll always prefer information and data that I research WHILE I’M AWAKE — I did not do a good job of making it clear that Golden is not my official guess (yet), but he’s a last minute consideration that I’m taking seriously because of post-coffee drinking research, not a dream — and the odds of any of us being right about Seattle’s pick are fairly bad across the board no matter what we do.
Not because any of us are bad at understanding the NFL draft (we’re ALL bad at draft predictions due to the fact that there are more than trillions of potential outcomes), but the Seahawks expectations of who will still be available at pick 18 have to change literally minute by minute on Thursday.
Top-5 Expectations: Derrick Harmon???
Cam Ward is widely expected to be the number one pick, with Travis Hunter and Abdul Carter going 2-3 in some order but the world will be stunned if Hunter isn’t a Brown and Carter isn’t a Giant.
Then at 4, Rich Eisen is one of many insiders who are “hearing” that the Patriots love Will Campbell and will draft him.
The first apparent question mark is the Jaguars at 5, a team long and consistently connected to Michigan DT Mason Graham, but Eisen and others have said this week that Jacksonville “could go anywhere” including Ashton Jeanty and Jalon Walker. While any of those three would not be surprises, Eisen also name dropped Derrick Harmon to the Jags, a defensive tackle out of Oregon who is Daniel Jeremiah’s 24th-ranked player.
A week ago, it seemed like Harmon would be considered a reach if the Seahawks picked him at 18 and now he’s being talked about as a top-5 pick.
That’s why we have to side with caution over confidence before saying that we “know” who Seattle would pick and especially who they would not pick, which is part of the reason that I’m willing to pivot back to players that I’ve said in the past would not make sense to me as pick 18 to the Seahawks.
In 2022, I first mocked Charles Cross to the Seahawks at pick 9, then a week later wrote that actually Cross “didn’t meet the physical thresholds” of Seattle’s past tackles and therefore could NOT be their top-10 choice. Fool myself once, shame on me. Fool myself every draft cycle, shame on Mel Kiper.
