John Schneider loves him some RBs

There was a time when I would have objected to the Seahawks drafting a running back in the first round.

There was a time that I DID object to the Seahawks drafting a running back in the first round. That was back in 2018, though. When Seattle chose Rashaad Penny with the 27th overall pick.

I know better now.

Not everyone else does, though.

As soon as the Seahawks used the 32nd and final pick of the first round on running back Jadarian Price of Notre Dame, two dudes on The Athletic’s NFL podcast sneered at the selection.

“That just seems like bad operating procedure,” said Derek Klassen of The Athletic.

Dave Helman followed with, “They are a caricature of themselves.”

Ah yes, the team that just won the Super Bowl and has never finished with fewer than seven victories in John Schneider’s 17 seasons insists upon wandering around the desert during the draft, naively thinking that running backs matter.

I, on the other hand, am willing to acknowledge when I’ve been stuuuuup …

… when I’ve been stupppppi …

… when I’ve been short-sighted.

Sure, I howled in opposition after Seattle chose Zach Charbonnet in the second round of the 2023 draft. I posted a meme about Seattle’s insistence on using high-end draft picks on running backs.

I’m not so full of myself as to believe I know everything about this particular question, however. That is especially true when the team whose draft strategy I’m skeptical of has become one of the most enduringly successful teams in the league.

Continuing to believe that the Seahawks are stupid strikes me as hubris of the highest order. In fact, it is the exact type of holier-than-thou dismissiveness that the analytics community used to complain about receiving from GMs and coaches.

I’ll explain that in a second, but first, let’s get the full picture:

In the 18 drafts that John Schneider has run here in Seattle, the Seahawks have demonstrated a tendency to draft running backs at the tail end of the first round and through the second.

Somewhere between the 27th pick, which is where Seattle chose Rashaad Penny in 2018, and the 62nd pick, which is where Seattle picked Christine Michael in 2013.

They’ve done it more often than any other team in the league during that time. I went and looked it up this morning just to be sure:

This tendency has been criticized by the more statistically minded for two reasons:

That second point has been borne out here in Seattle. For all the draft capital Seattle has spent on running backs, Chris Carson might be the most productive back the Seahawks have chosen during Schneider’s tenure. He was a seventh-round pick in 2017.

It’s hard to project success at any position in the NFL. It might be hardest at running back. Part of that is because injury rates are so high. The job itself requires an enormous amount of punishment. A running back’s success is also dependent on the offensive line opening holes. Furthermore, if the team’s pass game is trash, defenses can stack the box.

I’m not going to tell you that teams should go out and follow Seattle’s lead when it comes to picking running backs early.

However, it seems important to acknowledge that Seattle’s insistence on picking running backs early hasn’t prevented the team from becoming one of the most consistently successful teams in the league.

They have won two Super Bowls with two different coaches and two entirely different rosters.

Most importantly, they have won those Super Bowls with two different quarterbacks.

There is one other team in the NFL that has done that in the past 20 years: The Philadelphia Eagles.

And while it is possible to look at the Seahawks running back fetish and sneer that they are winning despite a “bad overall process” I would like to humbly introduce another possibility: We’re not as smart as we think when it comes to analyzing the game.

And for an example of this, I’m going to switch sports and rewind 20 years.

Back in 2006, the nerds who studied baseball were absolutely certain that catcher Brad Ausmus was terrible.

That was the entry in the 2006 Baseball Prospectus, the bible of the burgeoning field of sabermetrics.

The evaluation did not improve much over the next two years.

Ausmus played 18 years in the major leagues. He made one All-Star Game. By the time he retired, he ranked in the top 10 in innings caught.

We now know that Ausmus’ defense more than made up for his lack of hitting. No one knew how to measure that ability, though. At least not back then.

Ausmus was incredible at framing pitches, something which is now understood to be a skill. In fact, you could argue that the implementation of the ABS challenge system in baseball this year is partly the result of catchers becoming increasingly adept at framing pitches.

I don’t know if the teams that employed Ausmus actually understood this or they just realized their pitchers tended to perform better when he was behind the plate. It’s telling, in retrospect, how certain the statisticians were that playing him was a mistake.

Now the Seahawks may be winning despite an inferior draft strategy. Perhaps if they stopped picking running backs in the first three rounds, they would be even better than they have been.

It’s also possible that there’s something else at work here, something that’s not being measured yet or isn’t fully understood.

That would require you to admit you don’t know all the answers, though. Or that the answers you’re fairly certain of could be wrong.

I’ve got no problem with that. I spend much of my life doubting my own decisions so why should my sports analysis be any different?

I do not believe the Seahawks have a bad overall process. I believe the Seahawks have a process they should stick to, no matter what the nerds say.

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