Seahawks braintrust in Indianapolis for combine to eyeball draft candidates

INDIANAPOLIS – The Seattle Seahawks’ contingent will be arriving today for the NFL’s annual meat market/pre-draft combine with three pluses they didn’t bring here last year. More picks. More action in the top of the draft. And more time. Seattle general manager John Schneider, coach Pete Carroll and staffers are scouting this week in Indianapolis for what Schneider last week said he expects will be 10 selections in May’s draft. Barring trades, it would be the third time in 13 years the Seahawks will have a double-digit number of picks; Schneider and Carroll had 11 in 2013 and 10 the year before that. It would be one more selection than the Seahawks had in 2014. And unlike last year it includes a first-round choice, next-to-last at 31st overall. The 10-pack includes three expected compensatory selections over the fourth and fifth rounds from losing free agents before the 2014 season, most valuably wide receiver Golden Tate. It also includes the pick Seattle got from the New York Jets in October in the Percy Harvin trade – that was the trade of Harvin, whose acquisition from Minnesota had cost Seattle that first-round pick last year. If the Jets decide to keep Harvin and his $10.5-million contract past March 19, New York owes the Seahawks a fourth-round pick. If the Jets cut the dynamic but enigmatic wide receiver before March 19, Seattle gets a sixth-rounder. Another plus this winter and spring: Time. Schneider and his player-evaluation staff began fully preparing for the 2014 free agency during Super Bowl 48 week in New Jersey in January. Lesson learned. “I don’t think we did a very good job with it,” the GM said, “so we wanted to be ahead of it this year.” This time, Schneider began the full plotting for the Seahawks’ offseason moves more than a month earlier, in December still during the regular season. They brought the entire offseason preparation operation to Phoenix during the last week of January to finalize their plans during the days before Seattle played New England in Super Bowl 49. “We have to do that because what we found out last year was we got a little bit behind,” Schneider said, adding with wry deadpan: “You know, it’s a real bummer: We had a Super Bowl. We won it. It got in the way of our preparation.” Schneider sent his draft staff and scouts home to their families for a few days before they reconvene here this week. Starting today and Wednesday, they and Carroll will interview nervous college players. Each prospect can have up to 15 private interviews. The questions will be about almost everything but football, among the most unconventional things the always unorthodox Schneider and Carroll will do all year. After that the Seahawks will join the other 31 teams in staring up and down each prospect as they parade into and out of a humbling screening room. Only after all that will the prospects do in position groups the most recognizable parts of the combine: The 40-yard dashes, shuttle runs, plus agility and strength drills on the stadium’s turf that are televised nationally by the league’s network all week. Then after the combine ends this weekend at Lucas Oil Stadium, Schneider’s guys will fan out across the country to attend prospects’ individual pro days on college campuses. Who might they study most? The Seahawks’ biggest needs – at least as long as we assume 1,500-yard running back Marshawn Lynch is coming back and not retiring before the season, as Schneider floated as a possibility last week: offensive line, defensive tackle, wide receiver, tight end and cornerback. Some project La’el Collins, a 6-foot-5, 321-pound blocker out of Louisiana State, to be a top-10 pick. Others say the run-route paver and pass protector is a second-round talent. If Florida’s D.J. Humphries (6-6, 300) is still around at No. 31 overall, the Seahawks could be tempted by one of college football’s most impressive pass blockers, to address years-old protection issues. The other apparent need on defense, cornerback, hinges on whether the Seahawks lose unrestricted free agent starter Byron Maxwell to a higher bidder, as they expect. The Seahawks’ apparent need to upgrade at wide receiver is timely; the position is considered deep in this draft.