jammerhawk":1k8ywp5h said:
I don’t get why there is all this negativity.
I think there's two things that are causing all the negativity:
(1) PC/JS having what I think is really a historically impressive draft run from 2010-2012, which coincided with them taking over the franchise, and for (some? many?) fans set expectations way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way too high moving forward.
(2) PC/JS having what has been a comparatively incredibly poor draft run from 2013 through 2017, and even more so when you consider the picks they've given up in trade and what they've gotten from those trades.
#1 compounds the the disappointment about #2.
So, people are super-negative about McDowell not because of McDowell, but because he's symbolic of five years major draft misses that have only been punctuated by very occasional hits.
I think our evidence for this is another first round bust the Seahawks have had: James Carpenter. That was a wasted pick in 2011, but it was surrounded by so many homerun picks from 2010-2012 that nobody really thinks or cares about it.
Yet because McDowell was a wasted pick who is surrounded by a bunch of other wasted picks, he "stands in" for that general feeling.