Seahawks GM John Schneider understands trading out of the first round isn’t exactly the sexy move, which is why his first words to the media were, “Sorry ’bout that.”
But trading back, and gaining more picks in the process, is exactly what the Seahawks were hoping for heading into Thursday’s first round.
“We were blessed,” Schneider said. “That’s exactly what we were hoping for. We were talking to a number of teams there at the end, and Minnesota stayed with it, so we did it with them.”
Asked if he was tempted to use the pick, Schneider said, “There were some good players there, but we have the opportunity to grab another pick, another player. We saw value in the trade and just excited to pick tomorrow.”
He then made it clear that 40th pick could be in play as well: “Now you’ve just got to see how tomorrow goes. Right now we’re picking 40, we’ll see what happens.”
Had a trade not worked out, Schneider said the Seahawks had a player they liked at No. 32: “Oh yeah. We had a name in New York ready to go.”
Schneider said they talked to “probably between five and six teams,” about the 32nd pick, but pulled the trigger with the Vikings because “they just stuck with it, they were just real persistent, so it worked out great. Plus they’re really good guys to deal with.”
As for making that deal with the Vikings, Schneider noted it does help dealing with a team with which they’ve made several other trades: “It definitely helps. We have a great relationship with those guys… And we’ve done several trades with them. That definitely helps. There’s just a lot going on, so it just worked out perfect right there at the end to be able to do it with them, because they were just adamant about picking their guy.”
On the options at No. 40, Schneider said, “We have a number of players that are suitable for that pick at 32 that we feel would be suitable at 40 as well. There’s several guys that we hope will be there tomorrow, but if somebody comes tomorrow with something we can’t turn down, we’ll look at that as well.”
Again asked about trading back, Schneider said, “Just the way our second and third rounds looked. You saw all those players at the top that everybody is talking about, you saw all those players leave, so we kind of just watched them all go. We had a couple of players that we were interested in.”
On Having the last pick: “It was awesome, it really was. I told everybody in the room before we started, this is going to be hard tonight, but it’s great. We accomplished a lot this last year. We hope to be picking late every year.”
On the rest of the NFC West: “I thought they all did a great job. You look at St. Louis, their nickel package now is going to be ridiculous. They got a total road grader at tackle. They did a great job. They all did a great job. I told (Cardinals GM) Steve Keim to pick a punter, but he didn’t do it. Actually, I texted (49ers GM Trent Baalke) that too, but he didn’t do it either. Kind of bummed me out.”
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