Article: Good read re: SEA talent aquisition

A nice read from Zach Whitman.

http://www.fieldgulls.com/seahawks-anal ... -analytics

also zach is a great follow on twitter!

Pretty good read. Some unnecessary fluff in the first paragraph or two, but after that he gets down to business.

I wish he would post the definition for the acronyms. I'm getting old and can't remember what all of them mean and it breaks the read when I have to look them up.

But good work none the less.

Could have used a bit more background research on if anyone else is doing this with the WR --> CB position group, given that there's no evidence of its success yet. As is we don't really know if it's an anecdote, a trend, or a strategy.

I do get the sense, very anecdotally, that recent college coaches are more apt to change the positions of their late draft picks and UFAs to ocassional success (e.g. Sweezy, Bruce Miller on the 9ers, Tukuafu if you wanna count him as a succesful transition). There's definitely been a very big move across the NFL to converting college OTs to Gs, and the FS/CB thing has always been pretty fluid.

Edit: Another thing (in addition to the recent college coaches thing) that someone actually could do and I'd like to see would be about late-round and UFA position switches. It's easy to say that late round/ufa picks don't usually pan out, but I'd be curious to see if the position switch late round/ufa guys pan out at a higher or lower rate than the non-position switch guys.

This is an exciting year for conversion projects. The team is "all in" on this avenue for talent acquisition and development. The more avenues the better. :th2thumbs: Looking forward to witnessing what results they come to realize.

Go Hawks!

Popeyejones":3sxxeoky said:

Could have used a bit more background research on if anyone else is doing this with the WR --> CB position group, given that there's no evidence of its success yet. As is we don't really know if it's an anecdote, a trend, or a strategy.

I do get the sense, very anecdotally, that recent college coaches are more apt to change the positions of their late draft picks and UFAs to ocassional success (e.g. Sweezy, Bruce Miller on the 9ers, Tukuafu if you wanna count him as a succesful transition). There's definitely been a very big move across the NFL to converting college OTs to Gs, and the FS/CB thing has always been pretty fluid.

Edit: Another thing (in addition to the recent college coaches thing) that someone actually could do and I'd like to see would be about late-round and UFA position switches. It's easy to say that late round/ufa picks don't usually pan out, but I'd be curious to see if the position switch late round/ufa guys pan out at a higher or lower rate than the non-position switch guys.

Click to expand...

I think that I get your point (seriously, my IQ isn't on par) but the fact that they're drafting/signing these guys w/ the conversion in mind seems to indicate that it's a strategy. Carroll recruited Sherman out of high school but wanted him to play corner, not WR. Only one example but clearly shows that this staff has been at the very least, trying to do it for years.

Not sure how success rate would compare but I'd imagine that the numbers would be vastly different with regard to attempts. How many teams draft a guy in rounds 1-3 only to move them to a new position? Bruce Irvin is an example but I think his case is more reactionary than planned. He wasn't getting it done at DE so they turned him into a serviceable LB with some ridiculous physical attributes.

I don't think the author's point was to say that nobody has ever done these things before. Simply highlights the fact that they're willing to take risks and think outside of the box to try to stay ahead of the league in finding these guys. Takes a lot of confidence in your position coaches and scouting department and given the complete overhaul of the roster since 2010 and the success that followed, I'm fine w/ seeing this as a bit of genius rather than a shot in the dark.

At the very least, it'll be interesting to see how these guys pan out.

^^^^^ Oh yeah, good point about the DE/LB conversion being pretty common too.

And totally agreed about the author's point, and the Seahawks definitely seem to do this with some regularity under JS and PC.

I was just saying that I wish he had dug a little bit more into how common it is league wide. I know the Seahawks do frequently because I post here, and I know the 9ers do it frequently b/c I'm a 9ers fan, but I wish the author could have looked across other teams to figure out if the strategy is specific of more a league-wide trend.