The Seahawks have made some brilliant personnel moves during the Pete Carroll and John Schneider era. They’ve made some great Day 3 picks in the draft and signed some awesome players as undrafted free agents, including Doug Baldwin and Poona Ford. They have also fleeced a few teams in trades, especially the ones involving Marshawn Lynch and Quandre Diggs.
No front office is perfect, though and this one has also made several big blunders. The worst of them have usually involved giving up first-round picks in blockbuster trades for players that don’t play premium positions and didn’t even fit their organizational philosophy, as in some cases.
Speaking in an interview on former Falcons executive Thomas Dimitroff’s podcast The GM Journey, Schneider said at one point they traded for a player then made him the highest-paid guy on the team and he’ll never do that again.
Seahawks GM John Schneider:
"We traded for an individual and made him the highest player on our team and I would never, ever do that again. We just didn't know philosophically at the time what we were doing […] We should have known better"
Is this about Adams, Harvin or both? pic.twitter.com/8AZiIIgatA
— Computer Cowboy (@benbbaldwin) June 5, 2022
Most fans seem to believe that he’s talking about the Percy Harvin deal, which was one of this team’s biggest mistakes during their peak run.
To be fair, Harvin was one of the most dynamic players in football at the time. He was an exceptional receiver, rusher and kick returner and he made a few major splash plays during the team’s championship run in 2013.
Harvin was also extremely injury-prone and had been a literal headache for every team he’d ever played for. The legend goes that he clashed with coaches and teammates behind the scenes and infamously punched Golden Tate the week before the Super Bowl game against the Broncos. Even though they gave up a ton of draft capital to get him, Seattle traded Harvin to the Jets not even 18 months later.
It would be nice to believe that Schneider and Carroll learned their lesson from Harvin, but the Jamal Adams trade indicates otherwise.
