Seahawks GM John Schneider talks Ryan Neal, late stages of draft process

The Seattle Seahawks are firmly in NFL Draft mode and that means it’s an extremely busy time of year for general manager John Schneider.

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But as he does every Thursday leading up to the 2023 NFL Draft, Schneider joined Seattle Sports’ Wyman and Bob for his weekly visit, which was conducted from a location he didn’t want to disclose.

“I’d love to tell you where I am, but we had a private workout today and yeah, it was it was fun. It was a great day,” he said. “We’re on the way back to the airport and I’m calling in to do the John Schneider Show.”

Yep, it is indeed secrecy season.

During this week’s show, the longtime Seahawks GM dove into a number of different parts of the draft process from interviews with draft prospects both in person and over Zoom to the importance of medical evaluations, which are a key part of grading different players.

“We actually had a three-hour meeting last night, grinding out the grades with the medical staff, all the docs and everything,” Schneider said. “It always hurts when we have to take guys off the board for medical reasons, but everybody grades differently, all the teams grade differently.”

Seattle Seahawks part ways with Ryan Neal

Outside of the draft, the offseason has slowed down in terms of trades and free agency for the Seahawks and the rest of the league, but some notable Seattle news did occur over the last few days.

The Seahawks pulled their tender from safety Ryan Neal, who then hit unrestricted free agency and signed with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

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“We would have loved to have Ryan on our squad this year … Unfortunately, there is a process to free agency and it’s just the reality of it,” Schneider said on Thursday. “There’s different phases, there’s different consequences and you’re always competing as much as you can stay in as many deals as you possibly can and then figuring out what you can and can’t do.”

The Seahawks did “a number of things to advance our team and help out as many positions” as they could, Schneider said, and losing Neal was part of a tough offseason process.

“We had to remove the tender from Ryan and he wound up choosing to go to Tampa for what he thought was a better opportunity,” he said.

But don’t count out a reunion down the line.

“We never close the door and you guys have seen that, and he’ll be a free agent next year,” Schneider said.

Listen to this week’s John Schneider Show at this link or in the player below.

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