When it comes to the draft, the NFL tends to be pretty strict regarding physical measurements for specific positions. The Seattle Seahawks though, under head coach Pete Carroll and GM John Schneider, have time and again discovered and mined late round gems and seemingly ill-fitting pieces that then go on to have successful, productive careers in the league. Thanks to attributes beyond what you can see on stopwatch or a tape measure and the Seahawks coaching staff's understanding of how best to utilize them, these players have formed the base of talent for a consistently successful Seattle squad.
Headed into the 2016 NFL Draft, the seventh of his tenure with the Hawks, eleventh he's taken part in since first landing a gig in the NFL, Carroll knows that conventional wisdom won't help Seattle land a Richard Sherman or a Kam Chancellor - it's the understanding that thinking outside the box and focusing on what the Seahawks need will result in positive draft day results.
"We're drafting for us and what we want," Carroll said. "We don't evaluate for the league. We don't evaluate for the guys on ESPN and what they think. We evaluate guys on how they fit our club and our style of coaching and play. And so we have to be connected in our mentality and our approach and our vision on how we see guys."
Prototypes run rampant in the NFL, widely considered a copycat league. A defensive end in a 4-3 must be this tall or have this kind of arm length in order to keep offensive tackles from swallowing him whole. Cornerbacks must run this speed and show this kind of ball skill, otherwise they'll never make an impact at the NFL level. Quarterbacks must be this tall, safeties must be this small - the list goes on and on for every position on a football field.
Carroll and Schneider though, know that NFL success for guys like Russell Wilson, Ahtyba Rubin, Sherman, Chancellor, and even Byron Maxwell and Max Unger - along with the plethora of former Seahawks still playing in the league - comes from something well beyond physical measurements - it's about desire, but also physical attributes that fit what the Seahawks want, even if that's not what the rest of the league wants.
"We're not looking at height, weight, speed and what other people think," Carroll said. "We're looking at guys at how we can best utilize them and how we can match their talents to our system and all that."
Sherman and Maxwell and Jeremy Lane and Tharold Simon and DeShawn Shead and Tye Smith have all found success at corner, for instance, because their particular skillsets - length over speed - fits perfectly what the Seahawks want to do to offenses, stifling them at the line of scrimmage and allowing the pass rush time to get home.
Taking this approach into account, in the 2016 NFL Draft, you can say with a fair amount of certainty that a guy like Ohio State's Eli Apple or Samford's James Bradberry are more likely to wind up Seahawks than a guy like Auburn's Jonathan Jones.
There's a Tom Landry quote that usually makes the rounds around this time every offseason, and it's one that Schneider himself referenced - you don't want to take too many exceptions, because then you end with up with a team full of exceptions.
The trick - and it truly is a trick, otherwise Schneider and Carroll's success would be copied by every other GM and head coach in the league - is to know when to make and then take that exception and when to take a hardline stance on measurables, football intelligence and character.
And that's not something that can be measured.
