John Schneider, Pete Carroll Discuss Seahawks Trading Out Of First Round Of 2017 NFL Draft

Meeting with the media following the first-round of the 2017 NFL draft, Seahawks general manager John Schneider opened with a sarcastic apology. “Sorry, guys,” Schneider said to the media after his team traded out of the first round Thursday. This was not the first time Schneider has made such an apology, as the Seahawks have not selected in the first round in four of the last five drafts. The Seahawks first moved back from the 26th overall pick to the 31st pick, getting third- and seven-rounders from Atlanta for moving back five spots. Then the Seahawks moved back again, sending the 31st pick to San Francisco for the second pick in Friday’s second round, as well as a fourth-rounder. Schneider noted that the first move back was one they anticipated being possible heading into the draft, saying, “we kind of projected that before we went in,” though they thought the move back might be due to a run on quarterbacks, which instead happened earlier in the first round. Instead Atlanta moved up add a pass rusher, UCLA’s Takk McKinley. The second trade, however, was not expected. “We didn’t see the last one coming,” Schneider said. “I didn’t think that was going to happen, I thought we were going to pick. Our guys did a great job working the phones and we were able to put something together.” The end result is that the Seahawks now have six picks Friday, two second-rounders and four third-rounders, and 10 picks overall after coming into the draft with only seven picks. “(Adding picks was the goal) to a certain extent, but not at the cost of losing a player,” Schneider said. To that point, Seahawks coach Pete Carroll added, “That’s what was great, we didn’t feel like we lost a player to make the moves. That really kept us incentivized, it’s good.”Schneider noted that the Seahawks still had “several” players on their board that they liked when making those moves back, referencing what he calls to as upsets—players they didn’t expect to go in the first round—taking place to keep some of their top players alive into the second round. “It just happened that other people were picking different players, we had a couple of upsets in there, so that totally helped us out,” Schneider said. The end result of Thursday’s moves is what should be a wild Friday for the Seahawks, who as of now are schedule to pick six times over the next two rounds. “We were just sitting there looking at it, it’s going to be fun,” Schneider said. “It’s going to be a fun weekend.” In order for the Seahawks to be comfortable moving back the way they did Thursday, there had to be, to use another Schneider term, a cluster of players on their draft board with similar grades so they know that they’ll get, in their view, a similarly-graded player at 34 to the one they would have picked at 26 or 31. But the other key element to trading back is something Schneider has proven very adept at as a G.M., which is his ability to have a feel for where players will go in the draft, allowing Carroll and everyone else in the draft room to rest easy knowing the Seahawks will get their guy even if they have to wait a bit longer. “I thought it was a really neat job, John had to try to anticipate what would happen and the guys we were looking at, could we still hold them available to us, and we had to figure it out and take a shot at it,” Carroll said. “It was cool and it worked out. It worked out really just like we hoped, so we were very fortunate there. Buy: Single-Game Tickets “The way we’re looking at it right now, this is an exquisite example of that. It worked out exactly like we had hoped it could, now here we are going into tomorrow with only one pick away from knowing that we’re up and we feel great about that because he had a good sense for it. I think it worked out great and it worked out just the way we wanted.” Here are the Seahawks 10 scheduled picks over the next two days: Round 2 | No. 34 overall Round 2 | No. 58 overall Round 3 | No. 90 overall Round 3 | No. 95 overall Round 3 | No. 102 overall Round 3 | No. 106 overall Round 4 | No. 111 overall Round 6 | No. 210 overall Round 7 | No. 226 overall Round 7 | No. 249 overall RELATED Watch: John Schneider, Pete Carroll Draft Day 1 Press Conference Watch: Seahawks Mean Draft Grades Watch: Seahawks' Players College Highlights #SeahawksDraftClues Tracker: Keeping Tabs On Pete Carroll's Pre-Draft Twitter Hints What You Need To Know About The 2017 NFL Draft How To Watch The 2017 NFL Draft

John Schneider, Pete Carroll Discuss Seahawks Trading Out Of First Round Of 2017 NFL Draft

For the fourth time in the past five NFL Drafts, the Seahawks did not make a pick in the first round, instead opting to trade back for additional selections on Day 2 & 3.