Rob Staton is the creator of Seahawks Draft Blog, my favorite resource for Seahawks draft coverage since 2008. I was lucky enough to co-host a podcast with Rob for many years called “3000 NFL Mock Draft” and I’m fortunate again today to talk to him about something that we never had the chance to discuss before:
The Seahawks having a top-10 draft choice.
(Episode Highlights / time stamps at bottom of page)
Our first episode came a few years after Seattle’s most recent top-10 selection and as much as we’ve always loved talking about the Seahawks and the draft, there was always that missing opportunity to talk about the top tier prospects in a given class.
So this week we spent two hours talking about Seattle’s options with at nine, the needs, what bugs Rob the most about NFL draft gurus like Daniel Jeremiah, and assessing how the Seahawks can successfully rebuild and become the next Bengals.
Watch here, or the YouTube version to see chapter timecodes. (Audio Below)
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Some Rob Staton highlights (Of many!)
Find ALL timecodes on the YouTube link! This is a sample.
4:00 “The Seahawks have become a bit stale for me in the last few years. I never enjoyed the 2020 season.”
5:00 “I’m more excited for next year than I was last year, and I know that they’ll probably win about four games.”
15:00 “The tackle I really like in the draft is Abraham Lucas… he was absolutely OUTSTANDING at the combine. Nobody talked about it. I thought it was a really poor show by the NFL Network to not talk about him.”
28:30 “I think Linderbaum might be there at 40. He’s a good player. But Cam Jurgens has everything. He has everything. Cole Strange is exactly the same. Great at Senior Bowl, he’s got the length, the size. It’s hard for me to put Linderbaum ahead of those two players.”
35:10 “I hate draft coverage. I hate it. You’ve got a whole bunch of people who will tweet things out “So and so will go in the top-5.” “A source told me, etc.” If you collected all the tweets that all of these draft people and combined them, they’d have about 30 people in the top-10 by the time the draft comes around. They befriend people, agents, sometimes players. You get this in the media sometimes, “Could you put this out there?” You have to be strong against that. No! I’m not going to put this out there for you. It’s no different than Schefter scratching the back of a few agents to get a scoop ahead of Ian Rapoport. The draft media has got sucked into that.”
“I just think draft coverage is a load of old guff.”
37:20 “I will call Daniel Jeremiah out on this. Daniel Jeremiah basically speaks to his friends in the league, then tells you what they’re saying. I don’t think he puts a lot of work in. He will do a top-50 before the Senior Bowl, then write off 15 names of it the next weekend. Your job is to cover the draft for the NFL Network, you’d think he’d have a grasp on the top-200 prospects and he’d done the homework. Mike Mayock was always ahead of it. He didn’t do mock drafts. He’d sit at home and he’d watch tape.”
“I don’t agree with 80-percent of what Lance Zierlein writes, but it’s clear he does his own work. He’s his own man, he’s not basing his grades on the consensus. Tony Pauline does that as well. Everybody else, I’m not bothered about!”
46:00 “It was always going to be an unpredictable year. It’s hard to project the top-ten.”
1:08:00 “The game is changing and evolving. There’s a number of big name college coaches who walked away from the sport recently.” “There’s going to be a lot more churn with coaches.”
1:11:00 On Arch Manning: “The attention on this child. The pressure. Good luck to him if he can handle it. Maybe the Mannings are wired differently. I imagine they are. The kid’s playing high school basketball and he’s got Nick Saban and Kirby Smart watching him. Let him enjoy his life.”
1:18:00 “I thought Jordyn Brooks was okay. I don’t think he was anything special. He set a record for tackles because the defense was terrible. He’s fine, you could do a lot worse than him.”
1:23:00 Could Seahawks pick a WR in first three picks? “You’re only as good as your number 3 receiver.” “I don’t think there’s any right or wrong answer to trading DK Metcalf or paying him $25 million per year.”
1:25:30 “There could be 30 receivers in this class who have year one value.”
“Kevin Austin, Jr of Notre Dame is a fantastic player.”
1:32:00 “If you’re down in the dumps on Russell Wilson, it’s an excellent draft. The best thing to do at QB is Jack Coan at Notre Dame.” “If you’re gonna take a shot on anybody in the draft, don’t do it round one. Just do it in round three, four, or five, wherever Coan is.”
1:42:00 What’s the floor for Pete and John to survive a bad record in 2022? “You’ve got to give them three years to restructure this team. Otherwise there was no point in doing any of this.” “Even if the Seahawks get the number one pick, you’ve got to let Pete and John see it through.”
1:54:00 Rob’s advice for watching film. “Ask yourself, What am I looking for when I watch this guy?” “Look for what a player can do, not what he can’t do.”
Seahawks draft needs, Pete Carroll's future, and why Rob Staton doesn't read mock drafts