NEON WITH ENVY

How did John Schneider lose an arms race to his former employee?

John Schneider need only look at his old team to see the reason that the Seahawks are on the cusp of another disappointing finish: The Packers clinched a wild card berth on Monday by demolishing the Saints 34-0 and they have now made the playoffs in both seasons with Jordan Love as the starter.

This is now two years in a row that the Packers clinched a wild card berth that Seattle could have had — the Seahawks were just eliminated from wild card contention — and the Packers hit a 30-13 prove-it shot just to make sure nobody was under the impression they didn’t deserve to be in over Seattle.

Love will be going for his second career playoff win, which would be one more than Schneider has in the last eight years as Seahawks GM.

Question:

John Schneider spent 14 total years in Green Bay prior to being hired as Seattle’s GM, so why does his track record of drafting quarterbacks seem so antithetical to the one he learned, especially given that the Packers have had a good quarterback for the last 33 years?

The Packers are going to the playoffs for the fifth time in the last six years and the Seahawks are in danger of being left out for the third time in the last four. These two facts are related and anyone who doesn’t accept that the Packers are better than the Seahawks is in denial.

Packers since hiring Matt LaFleur in 2019: 66-31, .680

Seahawks since 2019: 56-41, .577

Both teams parted ways with a Super Bowl winning quarterback but LaFleur’s Packers are getting better with Love, while Pete Carroll was fired only two seasons after Seattle traded Russell Wilson for a bounty of draft picks and replaced him with a quarterback who many said was as good or better than Russ by the end of his first year as starter.

Do I think the Seahawks should have drafted Love in 2020, especially knowing by then that there was a rift growing between Wilson and the franchise?

Not necessarily, we don’t know if Love is that good yet, and we will never know if he would have been good in Seattle.

But the standings do not lie and the Packers—more so than just Love—represent everything that the Seahawks were supposed to be under Schneider: Talented, successful, and set long-term at quarterback. The Seahawks went 12-4 in 2020, they had budding stars like DK Metcalf, the Rams and 49ers were both having major issues at quarterback, and Wilson was still a young man at 32.

How can we look back at the four seasons since then and not come to the conclusion that the Seahawks clearly dropped the ball somewhere along the line as other NFC teams jumped over them?

Look at how much better the Lions have gotten since trading Matthew Stafford and how formidable they are in the long run because of their hires at GM and head coach three years ago. The Vikings hired a new head coach and GM in 2022 and they’ve won 13 games in two of the past three seasons. The Eagles went 4-11-1 in 2020, but they’ve won 37 games in the past three seasons and reached the Super Bowl.

I could keep going with Green Bay, Washington, and L.A., but in this league it doesn’t matter if there’s only one team better than you or seven: If you’re not the best team, you’re CONSTANTLY fighting an uphill battle. And it’s hard enough to win from the top, let alone the middle.

Seahawks must un-cook themselves

There are many different opinions for why the Seahawks have been treading water since the “Let Russ Cook” movement, but I’ll summarize what I’ve been saying the last few years, at least:

• The AFC has had a lot of good quarterbacks

• Until recently, the NFC didn’t have many (or any) good quarterbacks

• Whichever team in the NFC landed their “Josh Allen” or “Patrick Mahomes” in the draft would have a huge advantage

• The teams that missed out would be at a disadvantage

You can be the biggest Geno fan in the world and still agree that the long-term outlook favors other teams in the NFC but that the short-term outlook is even worse because the Seahawks are on the brink of missing the playoffs again. Seattle sat back and watched as their rivals took the shots that they were either too afraid to take or were unaware lead to their eventual fall down the standings.

And saying that the Seahawks had a “downfall” is not an exaggeration because they fired the most successful head coach in team history for falling out of contention.

Meanwhile, these moves were made since 2020:

• 2020: The Packers drafted Love in the first

• 2021: The Eagles drafted Jalen Hurts in the second

• 2021: The Rams and Lions both upgraded the position by making a bold move to swap their QBs

• 2021-2022: The 49ers survived the Trey Lance trade and still found Brock Purdy in the seventh

• 2024: The Vikings ignored calls to extend Kirk Cousins and instead drafted J.J. McCarthy and signed Sam Darnold

• 2024: The Moons drafted Jayden Daniels

Every team that has moved ahead of the Seahawks in the last couple of seasons also made a change at quarterback and several of them appear to be problems in the NFC for the forseeable future. This does not include other picks that could pan out such as Michael Penix, Caleb Williams, and Bryce Young, nor does it include the Giants, probable winners of the number one pick and expected to take a quarterback. It also doesn’t include Baker Mayfield, Dak Prescott, or Kyler Murray.

This is not a league of “good”. Most of the players are good. This is a league of best. There are only two potential windows moving forward that would lead to a Super Bowl in the next two years, so which of these seems more realistic:

Plan A: Geno Smith is going to become the best quarterback in the NFC/NFL and LEAD the Seahawks to victory as some greats do.

Plan B: The Seahawks hope that Geno is at least the 10th-best quarterback in the NFL, and then they just need to take this current team and make sure that EVERYONE ELSE on it is top-5 or top-3 or #1 in the NFL.

PLAN A: Best QB

When is Geno Smith going to be the best quarterback in the NFC? In 2026? He’ll be 36, those other guys I mentioned, most of them will be under 30. Some will be under 25. Is that the window Seattle is shooting for? To bank on a quarterback who has never been top-5 to become number one at 36?

Probably not realistic, so then Plan B?

PLAN B: Best Defense and Supporting Cast and Coaching

The Seahawks need to take a roster that will have no All-Pros on offense or defense except maybe Leonard Williams and upgrade enough positions on both sides of the ball with elite players to guarantee that Seattle can have the NFL’s #1 supporting cast and defense in order to elevate an “above-average” quarterback into one who will beat the Lions, Eagles, Packers, Vikings, Rams, Moons, and who knows who else over 17 games and then the playoffs, just for the chance to get to the Super Bowl. Not even to win it.

And “fire Ryan Grubb” isn’t any more of a solution than firing Shane Waldron to hire Ryan Grubb, as you have no idea who the Seahawks would get next and most fans were very excited about this change when it happened less than a year ago.

Sorry, I don’t have the answer for what Seattle’s best path forward is in order to win the Super Bowl in 2025 or 2026, nor am I even saying that the Seahawks should have drafted a certain quarterback in the last few years even though they have passed on several who are having success. Instead, we can reflect on why draft moves that many called “idiotic”, like the Packers drafting Love when they had Aaron Rodgers, have not prevented those teams from winning more games and making more playoff appearances than Seattle has in the last few years.

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Lost Love

Disclaimer: This is not a far-too-late plea for the Seahawks to draft Jordan Love, but one example of how Seattle’s “safe” attitude and avoidance of QBs has helped other teams usurp them in the pecking order, and why the media is not a good GM

Leading up to the 2020 NFL Draft, there was an overwhelming amount of discourse about the Packers and how they NEEDED to draft a wide receiver in the first round and that no franchise was screwing over its quarterback more than what they were doing to Aaron Rodgers.

(Come to think of it…wow…it was only four years ago that the media was bending over backwards to defend Aaron Rodgers.)

In a round-up of mock drafts that year, 20 of 25 writers projected the Packers to take a wide receiver, including Dane Brugler, Daniel Jeremiah, Cris Collinsworth, Albert Breer, Peter King, Mike Renner, and Lance Zierlein. Mel Kiper had them taking a tight end. Only 4 of 21 had Green Bay selecting a non-pass catcher and none had them taking a QB.

The media expressed outrage at the Packers decision to draft a quarterback instead of doing what they told them to do. Which, by the way, would have meant picking Denzel Mims instead of Love, as Mims was the most popular receiver mock draft selection left on the board at that point; it wasn’t that Green Bay picked Love over Justin Jefferson. He was already gone, as was Jalen Reagor and Brandon Aiyuk, two other recievers often mocked to the Packers that year.

The Packers would have gotten “higher draft grades” for selecting Denzel Mims instead of Jordan Love.

For all we know, the Packers might have drafted Jefferson that year if he was available, but ultimately they really just chose Love over a batch of mediocre players and a couple of pretty good ones. To re-imagine the 2020 draft with “What if the Packers picked Tee Higgins?” is to re-write history in the most perfect image that is available to you, which isn’t how history or life works.

Nobody looked at the 2020 and 2021 Packers and said to themselves, “Ah, the reason that they didn’t go to the Super Bowl that year was that they couldn’t pass the ball.” That’s not the issue when your quarterback throws 48 touchdowns against only 5 interceptions, so drafting Higgins or another receiver doesn’t necessarily do anything to move the needle either.

Instead of sticking and picking the best player who fell to them at 30, GM Brian Gutenkunst traded up to 26 — leapfrogging Tennessee, Baltimore, and Seattle — to pick a quarterback despite none of those teams needing one. (Unless Gutekunst knew something about former boss Schneider’s real intentions.) The cost to get a franchise QB instead of potentially settling for Noah Igbinoghene or Chase Claypool was a fourth round pick.

What Gutenkunst really did was choose a $5 scratcher over a crisp $20 bill and at worst, the Packers have won a free ticket, whereas the Seahawks are probably getting a fifth round comp pick for Brooks in 2025.

If the Packers could draft Love when they had Rodgers, why couldn’t Seattle have drafted Love when they had Wilson? Because they were afraid of the 500 ESPN segments about how it was the worst move of the year because it “pissed off Russell Wilson”? A player who would be traded less than two years later anyway?

Love, Hurts

From there, we could continue down the line to pick #48, which is when the Seahawks drafted Darrell Taylor five spots ahead of the Eagles selecting Jalen Hurts despite paying Carson Wentz only months earlier. You may not be the biggest Hurts fan (I’m not myself) but he was a better move than trading up for Taylor.

We could also say that the Seahawks shouldn’t have traded for Stafford in 2021, but the Rams did and they won a Super Bowl less than a year later. L.A. spent two firsts on a QB around the same time that Seattle spent two firsts on a safety who doesn’t play safety.

The Seahawks made a right move to avoid quarterbacks when every analyst was telling them they had to pick one early in 2022, but maybe a day three pick could have been used on the position and perhaps just by chance Seattle would at least stop the 49ers from getting Purdy.

We’ll never know what the Seahawks might have done with the pick if they traded up to number one in 2023, but they could have topped Carolina’s offer and chosen any of the three (Young, Stroud, Richardson) that they preferred. Obviously they didn’t view any of them as worthy of a trade, and we’ll know in a couple of years if Schneider was right or not.

Seattle was in a similar position this year and decided to stick and pick over being bold to move up in a class that had six QBs drafted in the top-12. Few wanted the Seahawks to trade up and so Seattle didn’t ruffle any feathers…

If they miss the playoffs for the third time in four years, maybe ruffling feathers is exactly what they should be doing. Doing the opposite of what your instincts tell you to do worked for George…

Love the won you win

This article had a high level of difficulty because it’s a balance between what readers might think it’s about and what it’s REALLY about:

• It’s not about “The Seahawks should have drafted Love or Hurts” specifically

• It IS about “The Seahawks were the safest team in the NFL and now they’re in danger of missing the playoffs again”

What’s “SAFE” about that?

John, you started your career in Green Bay and then you returned in 2002 to be GM Ted Thompson’s right-hand man for nine years, including during the decision to draft Aaron Rodgers in 2005 despite already having Brett Favre. If all you learned from that experience was that a first round off-ball linebacker will “save the Seahawks”, then soon it could be someone else making the picks.

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