I'm not trying to convince you of anything. I'm defending my initial point against the accusation that it's nitpicking. Any analysis that implies Seattle's invested twice as much draft value than most teams is not viable, in my opinion.
The Seahawks are 17th in average defensive cap spent over the past five seasons. As for draft capital spent, I don't have time to do a full deep dive, but they're not in the top eight of cumulative value (unadjusted). Ask me in January, and I'll write a script to figure this out. We'll combine the two, normalize, and call it a defensive investment score.
Edit: I haven't dug into it entirely yet, but I think the best way to determine draft value is using rookie contracts rather than cumulative value or TVC. For example, in the 2022 draft and using trade value charts, the #1 pick, Trayvon Walker, is worth a little over 2x as much as the #5 pick, Kayvon Thibodeaux. That's ridiculous. But if you use contracts, Walker is worth a little less than 1.2x as much, which sounds more realistic. Similarly, the #2 pick, Hutchinson, drops from about 1.5 to 1.05, which is again more accurate in value. That's because the Rich Hill values use historical trade data that (basically) decays exponentially, which makes sense for trade values but not investment valuations.
I might have the kinks figured out sooner than expected. And we should have a more realistic and financially grounded representation of each team's relative defensive investments. But let's be honest: No one actually cares.
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