the whole point of having draft capital is to either find players like this, or make trades for players like this. Slim chance there will be another Jamal Adams in the next 10 drafts, damn near impossible Seattle would draft him even if there was. Further, we saw how good Adams was with shit coaching. Just imagine how great he's gonna be with some of the best coaching and scheming. Dude is gonna feast.
The major advantage of the draft is finding players who, A) pay for significantly under market value for 4-5 years, and B) you have the opportunity to sign to their first contract in a somewhat cost-controlled way thanks to the 5th year option + franchise tag. Adams is a great player. But trading away 2 1sts and a 3rd just for the rights to pay a market-setting contract is lunacy. Seattle has no leverage in negotiations because they can't possibly trade that much draft capital and let him walk in free agency. If Seattle wins a Superbowl, then everyone will forget what they paid. They clearly feel they're in a window and it might be a good outcome. But the decision was a bad one, IMO - too much risk tied up in it. In 3 years they're going to have to make serious sacrifices to pay for this: they're going to be feeling the effects of missing first round talent playing on affordable contracts, and needing to pay Adams a blow-away-the-market contract.
While I agree with this, it is more than counterbalanced by the randomness that comes with the draft. For every Jamal Adams you can get in the first round, the other 25 to 30 players won't get a second contract from their team. You also need to add in the injury luck factor and hope they don't get snakebit. It seems like it would make a lot more sense to go for a proven commodity and cross your fingers they don't land funny. Especially when the window is beginning to close due to a coach or player leaving. If Seattle is able to win another Super Bowl, anything that happens after that is gravy. I'm not particularly worried about having to pay Adams just yet. When Seattle traded for Percy Harvin and signed him to an extension, they were able to get out from under that contract without too much dead cap money. I have a lot of faith in John Schneider's ability to structure a contract that minimizes the team's risk while still keeping the player happy. Even if he doesn't stick around, there's always compensatory picks after he walks. Don't forget that Adams also has to be a model citizen if he wants to get the deal he wants. If he shows to be the same kind of headache Harvin was, he's not going to stick around the league for very long.
No, it's not. Otherwise draft picks would be worth less than they are. This is just silly. Let's look back a few years and see what the first round produces. Spoiler Let's see, I count at least a dozen outright stars, let alone "serviceable" players who will easily get a second contract. Must be an anomaly. Spoiler Nope, not an anomaly. https://bleacherreport.com/articles/74206-what-are-an-nfl-first-round-picks-odds-for-success That article says that half of the first round picks drafted between 95-98 were still starting in 2005. Still starting 8-10 years later. If you're still starting in the NFL after nearly a decade, that's a good player. 39% were pro-bowlers at one point. This is consistent with my impressions - about half of first round picks are good picks. When you account for the millions of dollars in savings you get in the rookie payscale, a successful first round pick is worth a lot. And hey, Seattle just gave away two, which statistically suggests they definitely gave away a good pick. Veteran players get "snakebit" all the time. That's not a factor. This is just rooting around for justification as to why draft picks are somehow worth less. Again, if this were true, NFL teams would be giving away draft picks like candy. This is only true if the salary cap doesn't exist. Look, like I said, they could yet have a good outcome. Which means they gambled and won. Great. But it doesn't make it a good decision, any more than if I dropped the deed to my house on red at a casino and got lucky. Also: as I said, Adams has an enormous amount of leverage in his negotiations. He doesn't have to be a "model citizen," and I don't know why that's relevant anyway. Seattle traded a huge amount of assets for him, if he walks because he's a shitty person, that's a massive failure. Schneider is a good GM and is good with contracts, but he's still going to have to set the safety market by a large margin, on top of trading those picks, and I think that's a bad deal.
Sure, in that particular draft. But I can pick a recent draft where the talent level isn't as close. While arguing the merits of who constitutes as a star and serviceable is entirely subjective, I'll give it a shot. I would consider someone to be a star if they have at least 2 Pro Bowl appearances and/or are named All-Pros. This weeds out people who are good, but not great. Jamal Adams has already been named an All-Pro twice and 2 Pro Bowls in the 3 years he's been playing. In 2013, 12 players in the first round were Pro Bowlers. However, 6 of them have only gone once. This leaves us with 6 players who were multiple Pro Bowlers. One of them is Corderelle Patterson, a kick returner. While having a good kick returner is nice, I wouldn't consider him a star in the same way I would DeAndre Hopkins, a guy in the same draft class and position group. Two others have retired, leaving 4 multi Pro Bowl players, one of them being a kick returner. Of the entire first class, only Lane Johnson is still on the same team that drafted him. The rest have either been traded or left as free agents. Before 2011, the rookie wage scale gave monster contracts to first round draft picks. This incentivized teams to hang on to borderline players they might have cut loose earlier for salary cap reasons alone. For example, Vince Young was drafted in 3rd overall in 2006 and signed for 6 years for $48 million. The Titans trotted him out for 5 mediocre years before releasing him. If he had signed under the new rookie wage scale, Tennessee could have declined his 5th year option and cut him after year two or three without major cap ramifications and moved on. Consider this scenario. A team is faced with choosing between a guy with a high floor, but low ceiling (Player A), and a guy with a high ceiling and a history of injury (Player B). If Player A is selected, this means the likelihood of getting a Jamal Adams is significantly reduced. If Player B is selected, your chances of getting someone with Jamal Adams's talent and production is increased, but there is a past injury history to consider as well. Either way, the value of the pick is dependent on the talent level of the player and if they are healthy enough to stay on the field. You don't know either of those things until the pick is made. At least with trading for a player in the league already, his durability and production are known quantities. If you gambled the deed on your house and won just because, then yes, that would be a bad decision. If you did it and won because you were diagnosed with cancer and this was the only way you could afford treatment, well that's a bit of a different story, right? In the end, the goal every year is to win the Super Bowl. If your team wins the Super Bowl in the next couple of years, does it really matter how they got there? Every team that has won the Super Bowl after the 2011 rookie wage cap was implemented, had QBs on rookie contracts, excepting Tom Brady and Peyton Manning. Both of them were on cap friendly deals. Both the Broncos and Patriots teams signed or traded for known commodities because of closing windows and not having the time to develop draft picks that couldn't immediately contribute. Especially when those draft picks tended to be at the end of the round. If the team I was rooting for didn't have a QB like Mahomes or Wilson, I could understand wanting to keep a hold of your draft picks. The thing is though that guys like them don't come around often, so trading picks away for impact players to extend a championship window makes all the sense in the world to me. Especially since Wilson is 31 and a mobile quarterback.
Your argument is strongly rooted in, "well if it results in a Superbowl, it's worth it." Which is true. But history tells us that football is really hard, and championships are not won by talent alone and extremely hard to predict year-to-year. The best way to win a championship is to constantly build around a variety of talent which strongly includes rookies on cheap deals, so that you give yourself a regular shot at it. Going all-in on some expensive free agents because of a championship window rarely works. I can't believe a Seahawks fan is the person I'm talking to about this: they went to back-to-back Superbowls on the backs of cheap rookie contracts that were being outperformed, because of some good drafting. Bringing up the Patriots works directly against your point. They don't make splashy trades like this. Yes, they've acquired high-quality veterans with draft picks, but not two 1sts and a 3rd just to sign a market-setting contract. They've acquired decent talent through moderate pick trades, typically for players who are cost controlled, and often try to recoup those costs (see: Cooks). They've signed some relatively expensive free agents, too, like Gilmore, who have not cost them any draft picks. They sign vets and let them walk for comp picks. Denver's Superbowl team was built extensively through free agency, so they did not sacrifice young cheap talent to do it. I'm not saying don't sign expensive vets. I'm not saying don't trade unknown commodities for known commodities. Those are viable strategies. I'm saying this particular trade has a negative impact on Seattle's future, and they overpaid. Also, I didn't cherry-pick draft rounds. I picked two random drafts that were a few years old so that we had seen some of the player outcomes.
I will concede that the draft picks they gave up could be useful, but to say that it will have a negative impact on Seattle's future implies you are a time traveler or an oracle who is never wrong. If Seattle wins a Super Bowl with Adams either on the team or he's swapped for an asset that contributes to a Seattle Super Bowl win, then the trade didn't have a negative impact. We're going to just disagree on what constitutes an overpay, simply because we see the value of draft picks differently. I would happily trade any number of draft picks for a trophy and roll around in a pigsty of failure for a few years. That would mean Russell Wilson gets a second ring, and I'd get to moon the rest of the division until one of them wins it. That trade off is good enough for me.