One decade ago, Seahawks general manager John Schneider assembled one of best draft classes in NFL history landing linebacker Bobby Wagner and quarterback Russell Wilson in the second and third round of the 2012 NFL Draft respectively.
But at the time, most experts panned their selections. Bleacher Report, for example, gave Schneider and Seattle a big, fat F immediately after the draft. ESPN's draft guru Mel Kiper wasn't much nicer in his initial assessment, giving them a C- and writing "the needs were met outside of wide receiver, but in terms of maximizing value, there are huge questions."
Of course, those prognosticators were quickly proven wrong with Wilson, Wagner, and first-round pick Bruce Irvin leading the Seahawks to the Divisional Round of the postseason as rookies and ushering in the most successful era in team history. Over the next 10 seasons, with Wilson and Wagner building Hall of Fame resumes in the process, they would reach the playoffs eight times, capture two NFC championships, and win the franchise's first Super Bowl.
Keeping that cautionary tale in mind, evaluating draft classes before any players actually dress for an actual NFL game can be a silly, futile exercise and more times than not, initial grades don't prove to be accurate. Nonetheless, former Seahawks scout and current Senior Bowl director Jim Nagy sees plenty of parallels between Schneider's latest nine-player draft class and the storied group he brought to the Pacific Northwest in 2012.
"I think it's the best one they've had in probably 10 years," Nagy said of Seattle's 2022 class. "You gotta go back to that Bobby and Russ draft and Bruce was in that draft... I think they really stuck to their guns. They got back to high character football guys. And I really liked it from top to bottom. I thought they did a great job and that's just not as a former staff member there. I really do. I really think they picked a lot of good players."
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Attacking the trenches early, Schneider used Seattle's first top-10 pick since 2010 - his first year at the helm - on Mississippi State tackle Charles Cross. Viewed by many draft analysts as the best pass protector in this year's class, he allowed only 2.0 sacks on over 700 pass blocking snaps in coach Mike Leach's Air Raid offense last season, including yielding no pressures on 66 snaps against Alabama.
Nagy didn't get to work with Cross in Mobile since he entered the draft as an underclassman, but he did watch his tape during the pre-draft process. Though he shares the opinion of many others that the athletic tackle will face an acclimation period acclimating to a pro-style offense, he expects he will be ready to hold his own protecting the blind side as a day one starter.
"I think it will be a little bit of a adjustment just putting his hand in the dirt and coming off the ball with pad level and getting into people and sustaining blocks," Nagy said of Cross. "It's just really the speed of the game, working up to the second level, things of that nature. But Cross is a really, really good player."
Two rounds later, the Seahawks doubled up at tackle by using the 72nd overall pick on Washington State's Abraham Lucas, who also played in a pass-happy offense as a four-year starter in Pullman under multiple coaching regimes. Earning First-Team All-Pac 12 honors after yielding no sacks as a senior, the Everett native participated in the Senior Bowl, bolstering his stock with a stellar week of practice.
Being able to watch Lucas in action in person, Nagy was curious to see how he would perform against better competition after rarely being challenged in the Pac-12, particularly in the run game where he would be asked to work from a three-point stance. As the week progressed, he improved each day, which Nagy views as a positive sign as he prepares to battle against Jake Curhan for a chance to start right away for Seattle.
"I think that's a great pick," Nagy said of Lucas. "He came down here, he faced some good people, and I thought he had a really good week. I really thought he did a nice job down here. I thought he would go in the second, I was surprised he slid to the third. I thought that was kind of a minor upset for me."
Time will tell how Cross and Lucas fair at the next level, but after years of playing musical chairs along the offensive line and struggling to rebuild the line following back-to-back Super Bowl appearances in 2013 and 2014, Nagy loves the talent, youth, and depth Seattle has amassed at the position. This is particularly true on the right side, where he envisions Lucas and Curhan - who started the final five games last year as an undrafted rookie - having an intense competition in camp.
"The good thing is they've got themselves in a situation where they've got two viable young options at right tackle," Nagy stated. "And I think you could go back over recent years and maybe there wasn't one. Now they've got two, so I think they're in a good spot there."
Away from Cross and Lucas, Nagy also had the privilege of watching Boye Mafe dominate opponents at the Senior Bowl. Building off a breakout senior season in which he produced a career-high 7.0 sacks at Minnesota, the athletic edge rusher tormented opposing tackles all week long, including contending for MVP honors with a pair of sacks, three tackles for loss, and a forced fumble in the all-star showcase.
Speaking with Mike McCartney, who worked with both Mafe and Lions first-round pick Aidan Hutchinson in the pre-draft process, Nagy indicated the former NFL scouting director told him prior to the Senior Bowl that Mafe was out-performing Hutchinson in across the board in athletic testing training at their workout facility. Weighing in at 262 pounds, he posted a ridiculous 41-inch vertical jump, showing off freakish athletic traits that were put on display wreaking havoc off the edge in Mobile.
"He comes down here and the great thing is you see that first step explosion," Nagy remarked. "You see the ability to go speed to power. He's just got a really high upside because technically, I think there's a lot of things he can get better at and I think that 3-4 [defense] is a great fit for him, he's more than athletic enough to play on his feet and be a stand up linebacker. I think that's a better fit than him going to an even front team."
Coming into the league with much untapped upside, Nagy thinks Mafe has only scratched the surface of his potential considering his athletic gifts, work ethic, and coachability. Early on, he anticipates the Seahawks will use him as a situational pass rusher behind Darrell Taylor and Uchenna Nwosu and over time, maybe as early as the tail end of his rookie season, he could emerge as an every down outside linebacker and a foundational piece for their defense long-term.
"Where he fits right away, he's got to factor in the in the sub-down packages at some point. I think that would be right away. Every down, I would think that would probably be more towards the end of year one into year two. But with his athleticism, his ability to come off other people, being able to scheme him, and then just being able to win one on one with his athleticism, that's stuff that I think they'll be able to get production out of right away."
As for Seattle's other second round pick, Michigan State running back Ken Walker III, the Doak Walker Award winner left early for the NFL Draft and thus didn't participate in the Senior Bowl. But Nagy, who graduated from the University of Michigan, vividly remembers the explosive back obliterating his Wolverines to a tune of five touchdowns to help the Spartans win the annual rivalry game last season.
With Rashaad Penny and potentially Chris Carson returning for the Seahawks, Walker may not get a ton of touches early. But he gives the team another talented back capable of handling an extended workload and as Nagy pointed out, provides additional insurance at a position with an incredibly high attrition rate for a team that prioritizes running the football.
"A really good football player, fits what they want to be, gives them that identity of a downhill, physical runner. Deceptively slippery, deceptively elusive. Now they can sustain some injuries like they have. That position always gets beat up a little bit. It gives them another young guy that's proven he can carry the load. I liked that pick as well. I just wish he wouldn't have put it on my old team like he did," Nagy joked.
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Examining the rest of Seattle's 2022 draft class, four other Senior Bowl participants vetted and invited by Nagy and his staff - Cincinnati's Coby Bryant, UTSA's Tariq Woolen, Ohio State's Tyreke Smith, and Rutgers' Bo Melton - were selected by the Seahawks on day three.
In the secondary, Nagy views Bryant, the reigning Jim Thorpe Award winner as college football's top defensive back, as a plug-and-play addition in Seattle's secondary thanks to his instincts, ball skills, and toughness. Playing across from Sauce Gardner, who the Jets selected fourth overall, he took advantage of opposing quarterbacks targeting him more often by intercepting nine passes and producing 25 pass breakups as a four-year starter for the Bearcats.
While Bryant obviously brings quality football skills to the equation, Nagy cited his leadership skills as arguably his greatest asset, indicating Cincinnati coaches lumped him and quarterback Desmond Ridder together as the two catalysts who helped pave the way for the program to become the first power five school to reach the college football playoff.
"No knock on DBs, but you don't usually hear about that kind of leadership from the cornerback position," Nagy said of Bryant. "You usually hear about that at linebacker, maybe an alpha on the defensive line. But with Kobe, it was just his professionalism, his maturity, how much he loves football, really raising the bar for everyone else on that side of the ball for Cincinnati. So you love that about him. And then the other thing is outside of the instincts, the awareness, and the ball skills, he's battle tested."
On the opposite end of the spectrum, Woolen arrives in Seattle as the ultimate ball of clay for coach Pete Carroll and his staff to mold. In terms of physical gifts, standing 6-foot-4 with 33-plus inch arms and 4.26 40-yard dash speed, there's never been a player enter the league quite like him. He's truly one of one and may not have a ceiling in terms of potential.
With only two years of cornerback experience under his belt after converting from receiver midway through his college career, however, Woolen has much to learn technique-wise at the position and is the textbook definition of raw. Nagy, who began watching his film one year earlier and quickly identified him as a Senior Bowl target, believes his lack of refinement ultimately led to him lasting into the fifth round despite his rare combination of size and athleticism for the position.
Though he's a long-term project who will need time before he's ready to see the field on defense, Nagy lauded Woolen for his drive to be great and envisions him contributing as a rookie on special teams and compared him to former Seahawks receiver Ricardo Lockette. After making major strides with the game slowing down in his second year at his new position, if properly developed over time, he thinks he could evolve into a very good starting cornerback in the league.
"He really wants to be good. I spent a lot of time with him. I flew to UTSA and personally gave him his invitee as one of the guys we did that with this year," Nagy said. "You can see the measurables on paper - 6-foot-3, 210 whatever - and then you get up on this guy, he seems even bigger. This is a huge human being for that position. And he really wants it. He really wants to be great. So I'm excited to see what they can do with them up there."
While Nagy didn't speak on Smith, he identified Melton as Seattle's best value pick at 229th overall in the seventh round. Comparing him to former New England receiver Troy Brown, he gushed about his "great package for the slot," including being an underrated route runner and creating after the catch in space.
At Rutgers, Melton suffered from poor quarterback play and being asked to run a limited route tree in a stale offensive scheme, failing to surpass 638 receiving yards in any of his five seasons on campus. Due to his underwhelming productivity, he entered the pre-draft process hovering under the radar, but he turned in a solid week in Mobile both as a receiver and return specialist.
"I'm not trying to say anything about the supporting cast at Rutgers, but they struggled getting the football consistently in a position where he could run with it and that's maybe Bo's best strength is his run after catch ability. He's very sturdy. He plays bigger than his size, measurables, kind of like Doug did. He can break tackles. He bounces off a lot of contact, is extremely tough. He's got a little running back to him when he gets the ball in his hands.
Then, Melton turned heads at the 2022 NFL combine, running a blazing 4.34 second 40-yard dash and a 6.81 second 3-cone drill, showcasing elite speed and change of direction skills. He also exhibited excellent explosiveness with a 38-inch vertical jump.
Considering how well Melton represented himself in Mobile and his outstanding testing numbers, Nagy expected he would be drafted early on day three. But in a loaded class at the position, likely in part to his college numbers and size, he lasted into the seventh round before the Seahawks finally ended his free fall and called him to inform him they were turning his name in to select.
Joining a receiver room headlined by DK Metcalf, Tyler Lockett, and Dee Eskridge, Melton may have a difficult time carving out a role on offense from the outset. But with his positional versatility, ability to create with the football in his hands, and special teams upside, Nagy pegged him as a cherry on top for a well-rounded draft class constructed by Schneider and Carroll that could help Seattle get back into contention in quick order.
"I thought I thought that was really the steal of the draft for the for the Seahawks. I thought that Bo would go in the fourth or the fifth and then he lasted as long as he did. I thought he had a great week down here and he's the guy that I just think is gonna get open and be tough and make a lot of plays after the catch for that football team."