John Schneider has drafted eight offensive linemen in four years and one starting quarterback in fourteen. Since trading Russell Wilson to Denver in March 2022, the Seahawks have used Charles Cross, Abraham Lucas, Anthony Bradford, Olu Oluwatimi, Christian Haynes, Grey Zabel, Bryce Cabeldue, and Mason Richman to rebuild a line of scrimmage. They have used Geno Smith, then Sam Darnold, to play the position Schneider made his name on. The post-Wilson Seahawks are an offensive line project. The quarterback comes from somewhere else.
The popular read on Schneider has always been that he is one of the league’s elite drafters, and the receipt is the third-round pick at 75 in 2012 that turned into Russell Wilson. Across the eleven complete drafts he has overseen since then, the Seahawks’ hit rate at 500 snaps is 53 of 99, or 53.5 percent, against a league rate of 57.3 percent. Slightly below average. The reputation has carried more weight than the bulk math, in part because the 2012 draft itself was historic (eight hits on ten picks, including Bobby Wagner and Bruce Irvin alongside Wilson), and in part because Schneider has lasted long enough at the job to outlive Pete Carroll and to outlive his own franchise quarterback.
What the post-Wilson era actually shows is something narrower and more specific than the reputation suggests. He has chosen a position group to invest in, and the draft capital has gone there. The position group he made his name on, he has chosen not to invest in.
The line he chose to rebuild
The 2022 draft started with Charles Cross at pick 9. Mississippi State left tackle, the first offensive lineman Schneider had taken in the first round in over a decade. Cross has played 4,134 snaps in four seasons, with a 1,167-snap peak. He hit. The next OL pick that draft was Abraham Lucas at pick 72 in the third round, a right tackle out of Washington State. Two starting tackles in one class.
The interior came after. Anthony Bradford in the fourth round of 2023 (pick 108, guard). Olu Oluwatimi in the fifth round of the same draft (pick 154, center). Christian Haynes in the third round of 2024 (pick 81, guard). Then 2025 hit and Schneider used a first-round pick on Grey Zabel at 18, a guard out of North Dakota State. Two more interior linemen followed in the same class: Bryce Cabeldue at pick 192 in the sixth round and Mason Richman at pick 234 in the seventh.
Eight offensive linemen across four classes. Six of them interior. Two first-round picks, two thirds, one fourth, one fifth, one sixth, one seventh. The investment is across the board, and the pattern across rounds is the part that signals intent. A team that has solved the position picks one or two linemen on Day 3 to develop. A team committing draft capital to rebuild the position picks linemen everywhere.
The 2025 class is the most aggressive cut. Three of the ten homegrown 2025 picks are interior linemen: Zabel, Cabeldue, Richman. That is 30 percent of a draft class spent on the same position group. None of those three picks has a meaningful NFL sample yet, so the hit rate cannot be graded. The shape of the spending can be.
The popular framing of the Macdonald-era Seahawks is that the team is rebuilding around defense, and the secondary investment supports that read. The first-round pick on Devon Witherspoon in 2023 at pick 5 (the only top-five selection Schneider has used in the entire 2012 to 2025 window) was the loudest defensive declaration of his post-Wilson tenure. But the bulk of the draft capital has gone to the line, not the back end. Eight OL versus four CB, with two of the eight OL going in the first round and only one of the four CB. If the post-Wilson era has a positional thesis, the trenches are it.
The corner room
The other place the post-Wilson capital has gone is at cornerback. Four CBs in four years: Coby Bryant in the fourth round of 2022 (pick 109), Riq Woolen in the fifth (pick 153), Witherspoon in the first round of 2023 at pick 5, Nehemiah Pritchett in the fifth of 2024 (pick 136).
Woolen is the value pick of the era. Texas-San Antonio in the fifth round, 4,060 career snaps, a 1,252-snap peak season. Witherspoon was the only top-five selection Schneider has spent in the full window, and he has played at the level his draft slot suggested. The two of them are the spine of a Macdonald defense whose identity is built on cornerback athleticism.
The framing that Schneider has a “type” at corner is consistent with what the picks show. Four CB selections in four years, two early, two late, all athletic-profile fits. The corresponding investment at safety is much thinner: Nick Emmanwori in the second round of 2025 (pick 35) is the first safety drafted in this stretch, and his sample is one season. The defensive backfield Macdonald inherits is a corner room first, with the safety position still an open project.
The quarterback who wasn’t drafted
Schneider has drafted exactly one quarterback in the four years since Wilson left. Jalen Milroe, third round of 2025, pick 92 out of Alabama. The Seahawks took him as a developmental piece behind Sam Darnold, who arrived in 2025 as the second consecutive bridge starter Schneider has acquired rather than drafted.
The first bridge was Geno Smith. Smith was originally drafted by the Jets in the second round of 2013 at pick 39. Schneider acquired him as a backup and started him in Seattle from 2022 through 2024 after Wilson’s departure. Darnold replaced him in 2025; Darnold was originally drafted by the Jets in the first round of 2018 at pick 3. The pattern is consistent enough to read as a strategy. The Seahawks have been a destination for former first- and second-round QB picks who needed a second life, and Schneider has been willing to pay free-agent and trade prices for them rather than spend his own first- or second-round draft capital at the position.
Russell Wilson is the one Schneider hasn’t replaced through the draft. The closest the franchise has come is a third-round developmental pick thirteen years after the original.
The cleanest tell on the QB strategy is what Schneider has not done. He held the fifth overall pick in 2023 and used it on Witherspoon. He held pick 16 in 2024 and used it on Byron Murphy II at defensive tackle. He held pick 18 in 2025 and used it on Zabel at guard. Three first-round picks at top-twenty slots, three different positions, no quarterback. The case file reads as: when Schneider has had access to a top-twenty pick post-Wilson, he has used it on something that is not the position he made his name drafting.
What the 2022 class actually proved
The class the league watches when it wants to grade Schneider’s post-Wilson era is 2022. Nine picks. Six hits at 500 snaps, a 66.7 percent rate that is Schneider’s best draft outcome since 2012’s 80 percent. Seven of the nine players are still on the 2025 active roster: Cross, Boye Mafe, Kenneth Walker III, Bryant, Lucas, Woolen, and Dareke Young. The two who left were Day 3 picks who didn’t crack the 500-snap threshold.
The retention rate from a single recent class is the kind of number that flips. A 2022-drafted player who is on the 2025 roster has not yet faced his second-contract decision. By 2027 some of those seven names will be cut, traded, or non-tendered, and the 7 of 9 figure will degrade naturally. What it shows in May 2026 is that the franchise has chosen to keep the bulk of the class that opened the post-Wilson era. The 2022 class is the inflection class for Schneider’s post-Wilson era. If it keeps converting through the second-contract window, the post-Wilson reset will look like a successful one. If it doesn’t, the offensive line investment in 2025 has to absorb more of the weight.
The other context worth naming is that 2022 looks like the second-best draft of Schneider’s entire tenure, and the gap between it and 2012 is ten years of football. Across the eleven complete drafts in our window, the 2012 class hit at 80 percent and the next-best year ran 66.7 percent. Both bookend a fourteen-year tenure during which the other nine drafts produced 39 hits on 80 picks combined, a 49 percent rate that sits eight points below the league baseline. The 2012 and 2022 classes carry a disproportionate share of Schneider’s drafting reputation, and the second of the two is the inflection class that the post-Wilson rebuild rests on.
What this picture cannot tell you yet
The strongest case against this read is that three of the four post-Wilson drafts are not yet eligible for hit-rate grading. Only the 2022 class has a full three-year development window. The 2023, 2024, and 2025 drafts are partial, which means the 30-of-33 homegrown ratio is skewed toward roster math (who is on the team) rather than performance math (who has produced 500 snaps). A roster ratio reads as retention; it can also read as roster youth. The Seahawks have a homegrown core that is heavily concentrated in 2022 to 2025 for a reason that is partly about choice and partly about not having tested the cohort yet.
The second case against the read is that “Schneider has chosen to rebuild the offensive line” is not the same claim as “Schneider has built a good offensive line.” Cross is a hit. Lucas is on the team. Zabel is a 2025 pick with no NFL sample. Bradford, Oluwatimi, Haynes, Cabeldue, and Richman are interior linemen who have not yet produced the 500-snap seasons that would convert this pattern from spending into a hit rate. The shape of the investment is unmistakable. The shape of the conversion is not there yet.
The third case is that drafting at a position is not the only way to fill it. The Seahawks have spent on the offensive line in free agency too, which means the rookie OL picks are entering rooms with established veterans. Reading “8 OL drafted” as “8 OL needed to start” misreads how rooms are built. Most of the eight will need to displace incumbents, not inherit slots. The pattern of investment is real. The conversion path through the depth chart is its own question.
What to watch
Two questions sit downstream of the picture. The first is whether Milroe takes a starter snap in 2026, or whether Schneider extends the bridge-quarterback pattern with a fourth acquired starter. The second is whether the 2027 offseason produces second contracts for the 2022 class hits or a churn through them. Cross, Mafe, and Walker are the three names whose contract decisions will tell the franchise’s hand on whether the post-Wilson reset is a build-and-keep or a build-and-rotate.
Schneider has been the GM in Seattle since 2010. The reputation says he is an elite drafter who built one of the great defensive rosters in modern football and turned a third-round flier into a fourteen-season franchise quarterback. The bulk math says he is a slightly below-average drafter whose record leans on two outlier classes fourteen years apart. The next two offseasons will tell which of those readings is the durable one for the second half of his tenure.