The Seahawks have used trades to acquire some high-quality players over the past year, including safety Jamal Adams, defensive end Carlos Dunlap II, and most recently guard Gabe Jackson.
The tradeoff for adding those players, however, is a lack of draft capital heading into the 2021 draft. The Seahawks could always make more moves before or during the draft to change that, but as things stand now, the Seahawks hold only three picks in the official draft order the NFL released on Friday:
- Round 2, Pick No. 56 overall
- Round 4, Pick No. 129 overall
- Round 7, Pick No. 250 overall
The Seahawks sent this year's first (23 overall) and third (86) to the Jets as part of the Adams trade, and their fifth-rounder (167) was sent to the Las Vegas Raiders this week to acquire Jackson. The Seahawks traded away this year's sixth (208) during the 2020 draft for the seventh-round pick they used on tight end Stephen Sullivan. In addition to the seventh-round pick they currently hold, the Seahawks also had a pick earlier in the seventh-round (235) that they acquired in their 2019 trade with Detroit to acquire Quandre Diggs, but they sent that pick to Cincinnati last season for Dunlap.
In 11 drafts under John Schneider and Pete Carroll, the Seahawks have never picked fewer than eight times. In 2019, the Seahawks had just four picks leading up to the draft, but traded Frank Clark for a first-round pick, as well as a 2020 second-rounder, and that extra first-round pick freed them up to make a series of trades in the draft that netted them 11 total picks. The smallest draft class in team history is five players, which occurred in both 1994 and 1997, though interestingly enough, the Seahawks landed a Hall of Fame offensive lineman in both drafts, Kevin Mawae in 1994 and Walter Jones in 1997.
