By trading their first-round draft pick for Jimmy Graham, the Seahawks have put themselves in some rare company as a team without a first-round pick for three consecutive years.
Seattle traded out of last year’s first round to get picks in the second and fourth round, and traded a 2013 first-round pick for Percy Harvin. That will make the Seahawks the first team since the Chargers of the mid-1990s to go three consecutive years without a first-round pick.
The reason is simple: The Seahawks just don’t see value in the first round, especially late in the first round where they’ve been picking recently. Peter King writes at TheMMQB.com that Seahawks General Manager John Schneider has only 16 first-round grades on this year’s draft board. Which means the Seahawks, had they kept the 31st overall pick, almost certainly would’ve spent it on a player who only had a second-round grade.
In the short term, the Seahawks’ approach has paid off nicely. They’ve been to two straight Super Bowls, and they’ve just added Graham, who could have a bigger impact than any rookie in the NFL this year. Of course, the Harvin trade didn’t work out very well, and in the long run trading first-round picks for expensive veterans is a good way to run into salary cap trouble.
So it’s too soon to say if this trade will turn out to be a good one for the Seahawks. But at the moment, they’re a lot more confident that Graham can help them win than they are in any player they could have drafted.
