The draft is over and I will get into my analysis of it later today or tomorrow but I wanted to take a look at the other draft grades from some of the “experts” out there.
James Carpenter should be a starter for the Seahawks in 2011
There is a wide variety of grades ranging from a B+ to a D. The experts all have different criteria they look at like whether the team filled its needs, the quality of the players in general, if the teams reached for players, and so on so it can be hard to directly compare the different grades. But let’s look at a couple of them. (And if you want to see a great compilation of some grades check out this article by Liz Matthews).
Rob Rang – NFLDraftScout.com - Grade B – Rob Rang usually nails it when it comes to the Seahawks and who they are gonna pick. Rang brings up that “The Seahawks clearly have a plan in place for a quarterback, as they did not take one despite having nine draft picks. That plan might be to re-sign Matt Hasselbeck, find another veteran or simply run with Charlie Whitehurst, the passer they added through trade last year” and I think that is very important. If the Seahawks really did want a young QB they would have drafted one. They do seem to have a plan in place and they want to stick with that plan. Maybe Whitehurst, maybe a trade for Carson Palmer or Kevin Kolb, or maybe Hasselbeck comes back for another year. You may or may not like those plans but that is where the team wants to go at QB.
Rang also says “What Seattle didn’t get at quarterback, they certainly added in toughness up front, taking Alabama offensive tackle James Carpenter and Wisconsin guard John Moffitt in the first and third rounds. Per Football Outsiders’ stats, the Seahawks gained nothing or lost yardage on a staggering 26 percent of their runs last season. Clearly, Pete Carroll and John Schneider’s focus was on improving the running game.” Totally agree with this statement and I will almost never get down on a team for selecting offensive linemen early in the draft. The O-line was bad last year and they needed some toughness. Between Tom Cable, James Carpenter, and John Moffitt they added that toughness.
K.J. Wright and Kris Durham were suprises but the addition of cornerbacks Richard Sherman, Byron Maxwell, and safety Mark LeGree will add some size to the secondary and Rang thinks LeGree could be a suprise as a future starter.
Pete Prisco – CBSSports.com – Grade C- Prisco likes the pick of John Moffitt, thinks the Seahawks took James Carpenter a bit too high but likes him and is also high on Mark LeGree. He sees that the Seahawks needed help with their O-line and both James Carpenter and John Moffitt should start early and often for the Seahawks. But Prisco doesn’t see much more value in the rest of the players the Seahawks selected.
Mel Kiper Jr – ESPN – Grade D+ Mel Kiper is pretty amazing how he can talk for hours and hours during the NFL draft and really know his stuff on probably more than 300-400
Mark LeGree laying someone out
players who are possibilities to be selected.
He says “I hope the Seahawks have better plans for quarterback than they appeared to in terms of adding value here”. The Seahawks had chances to take players like Andy Dalton, Colin Kaepernick, Ryan Mallett, Ricky Stanzi, and others but in their minds they never saw one of those QBs as being of higher value than the players they selected. But I think Kiper nailed it in while they could have drafted any of those QBs they trust their plans more than the value of those QBs at the spots where the Seahawks could have drafted them.
Kiper also thinks the Seahawks reached on Wright and Kris Durham and he is probably right there. But the Seahawks did get a congratulatory call from the Chiefs when they selected Durham because he was someone they wanted as well so other teams did value him.
Mel Kiper also brings up the point that the Seahawks didn’t do much to help their D-line and overall he doesn’t seem to think the Seahawks got the value out of this draft they could have and I can’t really say I disagree too much on that point.
What can we take away from these draft grades? Looking through all of them it seems to come down to many experts thinking the Seahawks reached a bit for players and they didn’t really address the QB situation. In a lot of ways I think they did reach a bit but they really did want Carpenter and Moffitt and neither of those was a huge reach. And do we trust the plan they have for the QB spot or would we have wanted a second-tier rookie who probably would have had no shot at starting this year? Of course if the Seahawks could have gotten a probable starter at QB they should have jumped on it but I don’t know if any of the QBs in this draft are ready to start this year.
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