Seahawks try to defend one of the draft’s most controversial picks
At times we try to turn football teams into something they’re not, mostly because football teams try to portray themselves as something they’re not.
Teams do care about arrest records and character issues. But if we’re being honest, their concern is if those issues will prevent certain players from helping on the football field. Anything said by the teams above and beyond that is just extraneous public relations. They’re in the football business. That’s their only priority. Let’s stop fooling ourselves into thinking that’s not the case.
“But suffice it to say, we would never, ever take a player that struck a female, or had a domestic dispute like that, or did anything like that,” Seattle Seahawks general manager John Schneider said in 2012, via the Seattle Times.
On Friday night, late in the second round, the Seahawks took Michigan defensive end Frank Clark, who was dimissed from the team last November after a domestic violence arrest. Charges were dropped when Clark pleaded to disorderly conduct. He spent three days in jail after the arrest.
The Seahawks said they did all their homework on Clark and hitting a woman is “still a deal-breaker for us,” Schneider said according to their transcript. The Seahawks said that Clark never hit a woman. Clark says he didn’t do so. According to the Detroit Free Press, based on police reports regarding the incident with his girlfriend, “witnesses told police that Clark had struck her in the face. Hurt suffered visible injuries — a welt on the cheek, bruises on her neck and a scuff burn on her right hip.” Seattle chose to believe Clark’s side of it. They never talked to the alleged victim. Not that I want to live in a world where NFL teams are calling possible domestic violence victims to gauge whether their alleged abuser is worth using a draft pick on, but Seattle didn’t do it anyway (Schneider did say they “interviewed the counselors who were involved with the two of them.”)
They did a ton of other investigating, they said. And was it worth it? Here’s the Seahawks’ transcript from Friday night’s press conference, with Schneider’s answer:
(On why Clark is worth the effort for investigating the incident…)
JS: “Holy cow, this is a 272-pound man who is extremely explosive. He still has an upside, he’s an interior rusher, edge rusher, can play Sam, set the edge—they did a lot with him at the school.”
Clark can play football. He can help the Seahawks. If avoiding a player who might have hit a woman was that important to the Seahawks (“we would never, ever take a player,” remember?) then they’d have passed on Clark. But Clark can play. And that’s fine, it’s the Seahawks’ right to pick whoever they want to pick. They’re in the football business, period. That doesn’t make them much different than any other NFL team.
But the Seahawks put themselves in a position for some extra scrutiny by taking a hard-line stance against “never, ever” taking a player involved in a situation like Clark was accused of being in. They researched and believe Clark, and maybe Clark did nothing wrong. It’s hard to know what happened in situations like this. No matter how many people the Seahawks talked to, I doubt they know for sure either. But the Seahawks talked themselves into the answer they wanted to get not because they wanted to uncover The Truth, but because of “extremely explosive,” “upside,” “rusher,” “set the edge.” Holy cow, indeed.
It doesn’t make the Seahawks unusual that they’d take a chance on a player like Clark. It probably would have just been better if they didn’t portray themselves as something they’re not. They’re like most everyone else in the NFL. Possible off-field issues only matter until the talent on the other side of the scale outweighs them.
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Frank Schwab is the editor of Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @YahooSchwab
