After undergoing plenty of roster turnover earlier this offseason, the Seahawks added nine players to the team through the 2022 NFL Draft and have a very different-looking team heading into the summer.

Heaps: Barton should be most excited Hawks player after draft

Gone are franchise icons Russell Wilson and Bobby Wagner, but the Seahawks had what many considered to be one of the best draft hauls this year and, aside from some major questions as far as the long-term answer at quarterback, the roster appears to be shaping up quite well.

So what stands out about the current roster overall? Former NFL quarterback Jake Heaps answered that during 4-Down Territory during Thursday’s Jake and Stacy on Seattle Sports 710 AM.

“I do believe that when you’re looking at this roster, there is a definite movement of youth, right?” Heaps told co-host Stacy Rost. “I mean, you’re talking about getting back to their roots in the way that they rebuilt this thing the right way. They went back to youth, competition, and adding key veteran players to mix in with the youth movement.”

When Pete Carroll and John Schneider joined the Seahawks in 2010, they turned the roster over and added young players and free agents to the mix in an ultra-competitive atmosphere. Heaps thinks that will be the case going forward, though he admitted that there may be some hiccups as far as the rookies and young players are concerned.

“You look at this group and there are going to be bumps along the road as the youth goes through their growing pains, but I do love the fact that they have really turned this thing around,” he said. “If you’re going to end a significant chapter to this franchise, then you need to come back and you need to add that energy and that juice and that competition that Pete Carroll came in here with the ‘always compete’ mentality.”

Heaps thinks Seattle’s 2022 draft class went a long way in getting back to that competitive environment for the long haul.

“That’s part of the reason why I love what they did in this draft was that they continued to add to key premium positions and add to youth, so that these are players that are going to be with this team for the long term, not just patchwork one-year, two-year deals,” he said. “And then on top of that as you look at the cornerback room, first and foremost, there is a lot of youth in that group. There’s also a lot of competition. And that is something that I’m really, really excited to see how that plays out. And hopefully it’s not just the youth that you’ve turned over with this roster, but young players that can contribute at a high level for this team for for many years to come.”

Listen to the second hour of Thursday’s Jake and Stacy at this link or in the player below.

Rost: Walker’s path from underrecruited to high Seahawks draft pick

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