Seahawks stick in first round, select 5x Pro Bowler in 2014 PFF redraft

Over a decade ago, during the seasons when the Seattle Seahawks were the most competitive they've been in franchise history, general manager John Schneider was notorious for trading out of the first round. From 2013-17, the Seahawks only picked in the draft's opening round once.

That ultimately backfired, as Seattle was never able to rekindle the mid-to-late-round success it had from 2010-12 when building the foundation of a championship-winning defense. With the benefit of hindsight, it's easy to look at what the Seahawks should have done. In some cases, we now have more than a decade of context for how good (or bad) the players drafted during that trade-down era ended up being in the NFL.

In Pro Football Focus' latest 2014 redraft, the Seahawks avoided trading down via the Minnesota Vikings and instead stuck at their No. 32 overall pick they were handed after winning the Super Bowl. They used that pick on five-time Pro Bowl guard Trai Turner out of LSU, fortifying an offensive line that began its decline shortly after in 2015 following the trade of center Max Unger.

"Five-time Pro Bowler Trai Turner rounds out this redraft due to his solid stretch of play in Carolina, where he spent his first six seasons. Turner earned a 76.3 PFF overall grade in that span while contributing to some of the best Panthers teams in recent memory," PFF writers Max Chadwick, Dalton Wasserman and Trevor Sikkema wrote. "Turner's best season came amid the Panthers' Super Bowl run in 2015, when he ranked as a top-eight guard in the NFL in PFF overall grade and PFF pass-blocking grade."

In reality, the Panthers selected Turner in the third round (No. 92 overall) and the Seahawks made their first pick of the draft at No. 45, selecting wide receiver Paul Richardson. The Vikings, who traded into Seattle's spot, selected Louisville's Teddy Bridgewater, who was expected to become the team's next franchise quarterback.

Bridgewater appeared to have the potential to reach those heights until he suffered a near-career-ending knee injury in 2016. He has since remained in the NFL mostly as a backup, playing for six different franchises since Minnesota.

The Seahawks got the No. 40 and 108 picks in the draft from Minnesota, but they again traded with the Detroit Lions to move back and pick Richardson. Seattle spent the 108th pick on UCLA defensive lineman Cassius Marsh.

Of course, Turner would have been an excellent pick at No. 32 overall instead of doing two separate trades to get mediocre players whose careers didn't rival that of the interior offensive lineman. The drafts from that era ultimately doomed the Seahawks back to mediocrity by 2021 after struggling to consistently refresh the roster with cheap talent.