The Seahawks had the super-starring “Legion of Boom.” They had Richard Sherman. They had Kam Chancellor, Earl Thomas, Bobby Wagner. They had Marshawn Lynch.
And for the next decade, they had a problem getting back to the Super Bowl.
Starting in 2015, the guys they were drafting were arriving in awe. Rookies were suddenly teammates with idols they’d watched win the Super Bowl, while the new guys were college and high-school kids.
Those who joined the post-2015 Seahawks were less likely to make the team better by competing against their idols for their jobs.
They were more likely to ask for their autographs.
Now, after 11 years away, the Seahawks have won the Super Bowl again. Seattle’s domination of New England in Super Bowl 60 in February won the franchise’s first NFL championship in a dozen years.
The same man who saw internal competition wane on his team the last time this happened is in charge of making sure it doesn’t happen again in 2026, and beyond.
General manager John Schneider is valuing a prospect’s competitiveness — how they project to compete in Seahawks practices with Pro Bowl and All-Pro stars Devon Witherspoon, Leonard Williams, Jaxon Smith-Njigba, Cooper Kupp and DeMarcus Lawrence, plus Ernest Jones, Byron Murphy and more.
It may be the number-one trait the GM is targeting for his 17th Seattle draft.
“Yeah, we’ll be way more cognizant of it,” Schneider told reporters at the league’s spring meeting last week in Phoenix. “How do they feel about ‘Spoon’? How do they feel about Leonard? Murphy?
“There’s got to be a level of confidence, self-efficacy that we have to dig deeper into.”
Schneider says the Seahawks are evaluating draft choices for “not just being fans of these guys, but like, ‘I want to take their jobs.’”
That way, the GM says, “the competition just rises to the top.”
Schneider has mentioned this multiple times in the last year. That includes through the Seahawks winning 17 of 20 games then the Super Bowl to end the 2025 season. It’s perhaps his biggest lesson from reloading a championship team.
Competitiveness is another of the intangibles Schneider and his scouting and personnel staffs weigh heavily. In many cases, off-the-field traits such as leadership, perseverance and dedication in sticking with one school in an NIL/transfer-portal college world mean more to the Seahawks than 40-yard dash times and game performances.
Schneider will tell you when they do it right, guided by intangibles and make-up first, Seattle’s draft board is unique. It’s full of players rated by who they’ve proven to be as persons intrinsically as young adults.
That makes predicting the prospects the Seahawks will select this month difficult. The team’s draft board is based on internal character assessments no one can time, measure and see on game film.
Schneider doesn’t want his Seahawks drafting for position need. Not foremost. The GM has said that’s how his team has gone wrong in drafts over the last decade.
So just because Super Bowl MVP Kenneth Walker left the team to sign a rich deal with the Kansas City Chiefs in free agency last month doesn’t necessarily mean Seattle’s first pick in this draft will be a running back.
Unless he’s a competitor. And a good dude, too.
Last year the top of the draft fell into a perfect confluence of best player, best person — and position of biggest Seahawks need. Grey Zabel in the first round at 18th overall represented all three. He became the team’s instant, stud starter at left guard.
“We value people, not necessarily the position,” Schneider said in late January, between the NFC championship and the Super Bowl. ”So, people, the competitor, how they fit into our organization. And it’s our constant quest to be a consistent championship-caliber football team.
“We don’t really get into, like, position specifics. We just know we want to be smart in the people and the competitor we’re investing in.
“How are they going to fit into our building and how are we going to be able to take care of this person and how are they going to be able to buy in to our culture and what we have going on in the building.’’
So how do they do that?
Those ratings come from dogged investigations and interviewing by Schneider and his staff, learning the whys in a prospect’s family life. They listen to first-hand accounts of interactions on his campuses beyond football coaches — with teachers, community members and more.
“It’s just continuing to interview people, do all your background work, all our connections, all our relationships, college football, pro football,” Schneider said.
Where Seahawks stand before draft
Two weekends remain before the Seahawks are due to pick first at 32nd overall, the final selection of round one. Seattle has four choices overall in the 2026 draft that begins April 23 in Pittsburgh. The Seahawks own the last picks in each of the first three rounds, plus a sixth-round choice.
It would be the second-fewest choices in a draft in Seattle’s 51-year history. The team had three choices in 2021. That was by design; it was the COVID-19 draft.
This year having only four picks is also by Seahawks design. Schneider has said he and his staff view this year’s draft as weaker, with less depth in talent across seven rounds, than last year’s draft was, and the 2027 draft will be. That’s why the GM traded two third-day picks in this year’s draft to New Orleans to acquire Pro Bowl kick returner Rashid Shaheed in November.
Yet there’s a strong chance Seattle will end this draft April 25 with more than four selections. Schneider has made 74 trades involving picks over 16 previous drafts as Seattle’s GM. Thirty-three of those trades have been down, to acquire more picks. Fifteen have been trades up higher in rounds. Twenty-six of his trades of draft picks have been to acquire or give up a player.
Schneider said Thursday on his weekly radio show with KIRO-AM that he and his scouting staff are pretty much done with their draft board. Next weekend, the personnel side will meet with head coach Mike Macdonald and his assistant coaches to vet the board again.
So no, less than two weeks from the draft, the GM doesn’t feel great about the Seahawks’ draft as champions.
“Tuesday (April 21) before the draft I’ll just be with Mike,” Schneider said. “Then I’ll feel pretty good with it.”
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