Update On How The Rookies Affect The Salary Cap For 2015 by Greg Haugsven

36.7 percent of John Schneider’s draft picks have ended up being a complete waste of draft capital. Yes, you read that right. Greater than one in three turn out to be guys that aren’t ever going to do anything meaningful for the Seahawks.

I’m compiling some data on how well NFL teams have done in the draft since Schneider and Pete Carroll joined the league. We all know that Schneider has been brilliant at building Seattle’s roster up into arguably the league’s best, so that high of a failure rate definitely stood out.

That number might actually be a bit generous too. Greg Scruggs was a key backup as a rookie, but then two years of nothing have firmly on the roster bubble this year. The same could be said about Anthony McCoy. I didn’t count either of them as wasted picks for this.

Here is the important part of this: it completely doesn’t matter. That is the brilliance of Schneider’s draft philosophy. By consistently trading down and compiling additional draft picks, some picks can flame out without it hurting the team.

Stocking up on draft picks allows Schneider to take some risks. Some, like Kam Chancellor, work out better than anyone could have hoped for. Others, like Chris Harper, fail miserably. That’s the price of dealing with high ceiling/low floor players.

Schneider’s “go big or go home” draft philosophy has generated a large number of All-Pro and Pro Bowl level players. There have been very few Luke Willson-types, whose career arcs have matched their draft position.

Interestingly, this is the exact opposite approach used by former Seahawks general manager Tim Ruskell. Ruskell made a lot of mistakes in Seattle, but the worst was his decision to draft high floor/low ceiling players. Ruskell had few true draft busts (except Aaron Curry), but he also didn’t draft many Pro Bowl caliber players.

And all of that adds up to being a very good thing for John Schneider. Being the Anti-Ruskell is a nice way of saying Schneider is pretty damn good at his job, but I think we already knew that.