Tim Ruskell impassive despite draft criticism

"This draft won't get Mike Holmgren back to the Super Bowl in his final year," Brown said.

Tim Ruskell, the club president who oversaw the draft, just smiles.

"I don't know that I've ever gotten an A," he said, laughing. "So that doesn't bother me too much. It's kind of funny.

"Internally, we're harder on ourselves than anybody else out there can be. We do the three-year analysis, and that's the one I pay attention to."

This year, that would be the 2005 draft, when the "experts" and even some people in the league were fitting Ruskell for a white jacket because of the lunacy connected with trading up in the second round to get a too-small, too-slow middle linebacker from USC: Lofa Tatupu.

The same amount of time ultimately will tell on the players the Seahawks selected this year.

The team's first three picks -- Jackson, Carlson and Texas A&M defensive tackle Red Bryant (fourth round) -- were players the team had been targeting for some time.

Three of the remaining four were on the Seahawks' hot list at the areas they were selected -- West Virginia fullback Owen Schmitt (fifth), San Diego State snapper Tyler Schmitt (sixth) and Georgia kicker Brandon Coutu (seventh). The other seventh-round pick, Cal running back Justin Forsett, was just too good to pass on with the 233rd pick overall.

"We feel as good today as when we picked those guys," Ruskell said. "We had a plan, we followed it and it fell the way we hoped it would fall. We feel great about it."

Despite some grating grades.