Seahawks GM: ‘careful when you hear people say this isn’t a great draft’

The Seattle Seahawks have a new starting quarterback. After trading Geno Smith to the Las Vegas Raiders, where he’ll reunite with former Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll, Seattle signed Sam Darnold in free agency after the quarterback’s resurgent year with the Minnesota Vikings.

It’s safe to say that Seahawks general manager John Schneider knows a thing or two about evaluating quarterbacks after the busy offseason that Seattle has had surrounding the position.

That being said, Scheider is pushing back on the consensus opinion that this year’s draft class at the quarterback position is one of the weaker ones in recent memory.

“‘I’d be careful when you hear people say this isn’t a great draft [for quarterbacks],” he said, per the Seahawks’ official website. “I think it depends on the team, the player, the quarterback, how you’re going to acquire him, where you’re going to acquire him.

“Bringing him through the building is really about, we need more time, we need more answers, and we need more time with this player based on the questions that we need answered in terms of the vision we see for this player and the fit.”

Scheider also discussed the Seahawks’ process for making the finishing touches on their draft board, with the draft rapidly approaching.

“The scouts have seen how Nolan Teasley, Matt Berry, Trent [Kirchner] and myself how we have adjusted the board, going through it another time by ourselves. Now [the scouts] have gone out in the spring, they’ve studied it, they bring that information and now we’re going through it by position again.

“We’re discussing where they should be on the board and what that looks like. We also have the coaching staff’s grades, so we can read their reports now and see this is what the coaches think too.”