First Round: Earl Thomas
The Seahawks are known primarily for not using their first round picks, as John Schneider frequently trades down and out of the first round in order to acquire more picks in the middle and later rounds.
However, that doesn’t mean they haven’t had a ton of success when they do make first round picks, particularly early in the century.
While Steve Hutchinson is a Hall of Famer and Shaun Alexander may be in the near future, Seattle’s best first round pick in the last 20 years is no doubt free safety Earl Thomas.
Richard Sherman may have been the voice of the Legion of Boom, and Kam Chancellor may have provided the boom, but Thomas was truly the heart and soul of the group, manning Seattle’s high safety role from 2010 until 2018, when a broken leg cost him the final 12 games of the regular season and ultimately landed him in Baltimore the following year.
Thomas is a no doubt future Hall of Famer and arguably one of the best safeties to ever play the game, and without him the LOB would not have been the monster unit it was in the early part of the decade.