Field Gulls
The Seahawks GM elaborated on his eyebrow-raising 2024 remarks regarding guards.
It was almost exactly one year ago when Seattle Seahawks general manager John Schneider had this to say about NFL guards:
Coming off a season in which the Seahawks once again lacked high-level play on the interior of the offensive line, the “overpaid” and “overdrafted” comment frequently surfaces against Schneider.
Well, Schneider has since clarified those remarks in his recent radio appearance on Seattle Sports 710. Lest you think he doesn’t value the guard position, that’s untrue. He does argue, however, that the Seahawks have been guilty of overpaying/overdrafting at the position.
“The statement, I guess, is really not a level of importance; it’s truly important. It’s highly valued. But we still, to this day, because of the dearth of talent at the position, will overpay at that position and will overdraft at that position,” Schneider said. “We’ve been guilty of it, and we probably will be guilty of it in the future as well. It’s just based on a level of talent.
“The philosophy is not ‘we’re not going to overpay’ — we probably will because we have to. But you have to be smart with those decisions.”
Seattle has had close to zero stability at guard since James Carpenter and J.R. Sweezy left in the 2015 and 2016 offseasons, respectively. During that span, the only time the Seahawks had the same starting guard combo in consecutive seasons was Damien Lewis (LG) and Gabe Jackson (RG) from 2021-2022. Lewis is now with the Carolina Panthers and Jackson isn’t on an NFL roster. They traded a fourth-round pick to the Raiders to acquire Jackson, who received an extension he wasn’t able to complete. It’s more likely than not they’ll have a minimum of one new starting guard next season given Laken Tomlinson is a free agent.
Schneider also claimed that he previously worked with someone who didn’t believe in paying guards at all, which is a philosophy he doesn’t share and isn’t how the Seahawks operate.
“Are we going to overpay a guard and lose out on a defensive tackle? No. We’d rather pay the player that we think is the better talent. It’s kind of like drafting for need in the draft.
“... It’s just like we talked about supply and demand. It’s never like it’s not important or we have this philosophy that we don’t value (guards). I worked with somebody that used to say, ‘A guard is a guard is a guard, and you don’t pay them.’ I did work with somebody like that in my past. But that’s not the case with us. It’s really like, we have to put a value on people at the end of the day.
“It happens every year and we’ll see it this weekend, too, when we go down to the combine. They’ll be like, ‘this player, we would grade him as a solid backup or a solid starter’...but he’s going to get paid like a difference maker, which...
