How John Schneider's 'Ravens impression' will impact Seahawks draft decisions

What does it mean for Seahawks to 'play like a Raven'?: 1879

Seaside Mom was in town this weekend and she told a story of me solving a Wheel of Fortune puzzle as a young child when there were only a few letters on the board: “Quoth the raven, Nevermore”

We have no idea what letters had been revealed at that point, but visuals are always better:

After I solved it, Seaside Mom’s question wasn’t how I put the words together but how did I even know that quote. Now as an adult, I assumed it must have been because I was such a “Poe-head”, I was no “Poe-ser”, and I have always liked scary stories. Who among us born between 1978 and 1989 didn’t own this book:

But no, like most things from childhood, everything comes back to learning it from The Simpsons.

Many NFL fans, analysts, coaches, players, and GMs would say that when it comes to building a perennially competitive football teams, everything comes back to learning it from the Baltimore Ravens. Since Seattle Seahawks GM John Schneider hired Mike Macdonald as head coach away from the Ravens, he’s mentioned several times that the two franchises have always been aligned in philosophy:

Without Pete Carroll, I expect the Seahawks to do fewer “Pete Carroll things”. That being said, Schneider’s made it clear that the franchise isn’t exactly starting from scratch and that Macdonald was hired in part because the Ravens core philosophies and Pete’s core philosophies were closely aligned. In interviews he’s mentioned that Baltimore’s “Play Like a Raven” motto and Seattle’s “Always Compete” were factors in choosing Macdonald as the next head coach.

So what does it mean to “Play Like a Raven”? Baltimore’s team website covered that in this 2009 article as head coach John Harbaugh was going into his second season with the team.

It started years ago with **Ozzie Newsome**, the team's general manager and executive vice president, who stated that he looked for players who "Played Like a Raven."

Head coach **John Harbaugh** picked up on the phrase last season. "We have players who play like Ravens," he said often.

And what are some of the characteristics of players who "Play Like a Raven?" Passion, strength, good character, courage, intensity, humility, determination, intelligence and pride to compete at the highest level.

Schneider has said it himself, Mike Macdonald’s lived it as a Baltimore assistant coach for nine of the last 10 years: The Seahawks are intending to fly like Ravens, is that even possible? To find the answer, I went to Google.

Yaw see that? I guess a bird CAN change its feathers.

Or maybe not.

But let’s not mince words here because John Schneider has flat out directly told us which types of players the Seattle Seahawks will add in the draft this year by repeating that the team hired Macdonald in part due to his familiarity with the traits the Seahawks and Ravens look for in players:

“Passion, strength, good character, courage, intensity, humility, determination, intelligence and pride to compete at the highest level.”

We could see it in Seattle’s 2023 draft class too: Devon Witherspoon has “intensity”, Derick Hall has “courage”, Jaxon Smith-Njigba has “passion”, Olu Oluwatimi has “determination”, Jake Bobo (undrafted) has “pride to compete”, Zach Charbonnet has “good character”…Of course, all of the new Seahawks have most or all of these characteristics, I’m just pointing maybe some of the ones that stand out.

One of the reasons that Witherspoon was graded higher than Christian Gonzalez in the 2023 draft was a perceived hesitancy on Gonzalez’s part to finish tackles. That shows a lack of intensity and I don’t want to say “selfish” but maybe Gonzalez prioritized his own health over doing what was best for the team and even if many of us sympathize with that point of view it’s not going to look good to teams compared to a player who puts everything on the line on every play and is just as good or better than you at everything else.

(Ironically, it was Gonzalez who missed most of his rookie season with injury.)

So are the Seahawks going to have Alabama cornerback Kool-Aid McKinstry on their big board when The Athletic’s Dane Brugler writes of his weaknesses: “Average competitiveness on tape, especially compared to Terrion Arnold on the other side…Normally a strong tackler, misses usually come from lazily throwing his shoulder and bouncing off the ball carrier instead of wrapping up and finishing.”?

No, McKinstry will not be drafted by the Seahawks. He lacks the competitive edge, passion, courage, intensity, and pride to compete to play like a Seahawk and I got that all from one note about him. And I know I’m right about McKinstry—I know, nobody really thinks there’s any connection here anyway—because it’s not like it’s him vs. one other player. It’s him or 50 other options. It would never get to the point where Schneider and Macdonald had to settle for a prospect who they can’t comfortably say will ever care to give 100% on every tackle attempt.

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When it comes to playing like a Raven and always competing like a Seahawk, it shouldn’t be that hard to rule out many other prospects based on these tenets. Sure it is hard for any football player to advance through high school and college to actually make it into the NFL draft news cycle without being uniquely competitive, intense, passionate, and determined. But we could even see the difference with the top two cornerbacks in the 2023 draft: Spoon was CLEARLY more competitive, physical, and intense than Gonzalez.

On Cooper DeJean, Brugler says: “Plays physical, opponents know they’re in for a dogfight.”

On a different top-5 CB prospect Nate Wiggins, Brugler says: “late escaping blocks and must become more of a factor in the run game, patient in press but needs to use better phsyicality at the line…suspect play strength is a legitimate concern.”

There are reasons I’ve docked DeJean as a consideration at pick 16, but there’s a good argument to be made for him as an option if Seattle trades down. If Wiggins is already a concern in terms of play strength and physicality, then why put him on the Seahawks board even if he’s the best cover corner in the draft? “Play like a Seahawk” says nothing about 40-yard dash times and stickiness in coverage. These are human characteristics, not football traits or even athletic accomplishments. That’s certainly another draft sheet that Seattle runs through before picking a player that does have benchmarks for size, length, and speed, but if the front office and coaches have doubts about work ethic or character, then the rest is meaningless.

That could also be why the Baltimore Ravens have been so good for so long without picking any players in the top-10. They’re getting better value on day two from the fact that they find players who they know they can coach up rather than relying on first round 99th percentile athletes who sometimes peak in college.

Ravens roster + Draft history

Regarding my opinion that the Seahawks will trade down in the first round, there’s nothing from Macdonald’s past employer and Schneider’s immense respect for future Hall of Fame GM Ozzie Newsome that would suggest Seattle isn’t leaning in that direction. (Newsome is already in the Hall of Fame as a player, he’s expected to become the first person to be inducted into the Hall twice.)

First of all, the Ravens are one of the most successful franchises in the history of the NFL so long as we ignore anything that happened prior to moving from Cleveland to Baltimore in 1996. Since and including winning the Super Bowl in 2000, the Ravens have made the playoffs in 15 of 24 seasons, won two championships, reached five AFC conference championship games, and they’ve only lost three wild card games in that time.

The Seahawks have lost three wild card games since 2018.

With regards to Baltimore’s consistent record of success (their worst playoff drought was 2015-2017 and they finished second in the division in two of those three seasons), the Ravens have only employed two head coaches since 1999, both won a Super Bowl, and they have never put all their eggs into a top-ranked quarterback prospect: Trent Dilfer was a journeyman castoff, Joe Flacco was the 18th pick in the draft, Lamar Jackson was the 32nd pick in the draft. (For those wondering, Kyle Boller was the 19th pick of the draft.)

If the Seahawks play and draft like Ravens, they’re not going to trade up for a quarterback and they’re not going to trade up at all: If this is how Schneider wants to run Seattle, he’s going to focus on accumulating more picks in the middle rounds of the draft.

Ravens 2023 roster

Until they ran into the Chiefs in the AFC Championship, the Baltimore Ravens truly were the best team in the NFL last season. Yet the highest-drafted player by the Ravens on the entire roster was safety Kyle Hamilton, the 14th overall pick in the 2022 draft. Next is cornerback Marlon Humphrey, the 16th pick of the 2017 draft. Then there’s WR Zay Flowers (22nd, 2023), C Tyler Linderbaum (25th, 2022), WR Rashod Bateman (27th, 2021), LB Patrick Queen (28th, 2020), EDGE Odafe Oweh (31st, 2021), and Lamar Jackson (32nd, 2018).

Those eight players are the only former Ravens first round picks who were on the 2023 roster and Bateman, Oweh don’t really contribute that much.

Remarkably there were only two second round picks on the roster (David Ojabo, J.K. Dobbins, both with serious injury issues) but the third and fourth rounds produced a ton of talent for the Ravens: DT Justin Madubuike, TE Mark Andrews, CB Brandon Stephens, LB Malik Harrison, TE Isaiah Likely, KR Devin Duvernay, RB Justice Hill, P Jordan Stout. The team website is also projecting starting roles for more third and fourth round picks next year like LB Trenton Simpson, RT Daniel Faalele, RG Ben Cleveland, and DT Travis Jones.

Essentially the CORE of one of the best teams in the NFL is made up of mid-to-late first round picks (Baltimore is a stranger to trading up in the top-10, but not against trading into the back of the first round as they did for Lamar) and third-fourth round picks. And I mean that literally 60-75% of the Ravens starters on offense and defense come from these two areas: Mid-to-late first, third and fourth rounds.

Why shouldn’t we expect John Schneider—who has been diligently researching players projected to go late-first, second, third, and fourth—to try his hand at filling out Seattle’s roster for Mike Macdonald with more players who maybe don’t have the same perceived “ceiling” as top-15 picks but fit all the traits of “playing like a Raven or Seahawk”?

Of course, Kyle Hamilton wasn’t just “a” player on the Ravens last year, he was arguably the defensive MVP. Maybe there’s a prospect on the board at 16, such as Texas DT Byron Murphy or Florida State edge Jared Verse or UCLA edge Laiatu Latu, who makes Seattle stick-and-pick because they feel he’s that special. But with picks 3.81, 4.102, and 4.118 as his only choices between 1.16 and 6.179, I’d expect Schneider to explore ways for the Seahawks to add more picks in the third and fourth rounds.

Seahawks 2023 roster

Much different than Baltimore’s core roster building strategy (intentional or uinintentional, I can’t say), Seattle’s 2023 depth chart shows 10 second round picks by the Seahawks (eight more than the Ravens) and only three third round picks (five fewer than the Ravens); the Ravens also don’t care about later rounds as they only had two fifth, zero sixth, and one seventh round picks (of their own) on the 2023 roster, including safety Geno Stone. Baltimore gets a TON of picks from the compensatory formula (most in the NFL since the program started, which is also the polar opposite of the Seahawks) and yet they ditch extra picks later for more picks in the middle or they just don’t make the team because the depth chart is too deep and competitive already.

The Seahawks had five fifth, two sixth, and two seventh round picks on the roster last season.

Back to the compensatory picks, that’s another sign that the Seahawks intend to fly more like Ravens than Hawks in the next era of the franchise: Seattle only had one compensatory pick in the past seven years, but Schneider is clearly playing the comp pick game in 2024. The Seahawks are projected to get a fourth and a fifth round comp pick in 2025 based on free agent losses Damien Lewis, Jordyn Brooks, and they didn’t seek out players who would have offset those deals like they might have in the past. Signing Laken Tomlinson, who doesn’t count against the comp picks, instead of a younger guard option like Jon Runyan, Jr. for example, is partly a comp pick move.

The Ravens and Seahawks were once on polar ends of the comp pick game and now they’re at least a little closer. (Baltimore doesn’t change its feathers: They lost SEVEN free agents who qualify for comp picks, but the NFL has a max of four allowed for free agent losses. They’ll get four…again.) And the Ravnes will probably use their two sixth round comp picks in 2025 to trade up for player in the earlier rounds.

This year, the Ravens already traded Morgan Moses to the Jets in a fourth ronud pick swap (exchanging a comp pick at 135 for a pick at 113) and they have a fifth, a sixth, and two sevenths to use as more ammo to move up.

The Seahawks have a higher first round pick (16 vs. 30) but without a second and trading picks 78&152 for 102&179 to get Sam Howell, Seattle is in no position to get busy in the third and fourth rounds unless they do trade down from their first pick. That’s okay, maybe Seattle just wants to get one great player out of this draft with their first pick and then come back to attack in 2025 when they’ll have a lot more capital to work with barring anymore trades of future picks for veterans as they did with Leonard Williams.

But at least we know that whenever they do pick players in the draft, they’ll likely be birds.

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