John Schneider, the Seattle Seahawks general manager met with reporters on Wednesday to discuss the team’s situation. Week One is quickly approaching, and the team has its roster set. The is the first time in a decade that the Seahawks are without quarterback Russell Wilson, who was traded off to Denver Broncos and linebacker Bobby Wagner, who signed with the Los Angeles Rams.

He started by saying,” I think the easiest thing to do is to say, well, who are the stars right? I’m not going to mention names but, you know, look at the guys. It’s pretty easy to know who the big-time players are. I think it’s an exciting thing because the fans don’t know what’s coming and who’s going to step forward and I think there’s a bunch of opportunities for guys to step forward.”

The manager expressed his surprise on many Seahawks players not making the cut in the NFL top 100 players list,” When I have things on in the background and I see guys like DK Metcalf and Tyler Lockett not mentioned in the NFL top 100 players, it blows my mind. Jordyn Brooks and whar he did last year. I was listening to something while I was working and somebody’s talking about, ” Oh, they have nothing on defence, they got Jamal Adamsand and that’s it.” And I’m thinking to myself what about Quandre Diggs? There’s a lot of fun stuff that we have – Al Woods is an incredible leader.”

He further added,” This is the ultimate team sport, and I think the cool thing about when you look back on our history in terms of messaging the fans from your 30,000-foot view, there weren’t a lot of people who knew who Richard Sherman was or Kam (Chancellor) or K.J (Wright) and Bobby (Wagner) for that matter, all those guys. Russ (Wilson) was a third-round pick when Pete (Caroll) decided to start him as a rookie, so these guys come out of nowhere and there’s so many cool opportunities for these guys and the staff. I’ve been really impressed with their level of teaching, education, the time they spend with the guys. It’s important for them to develop people and I’m excited to see where it goes.”

The ex-Green Bay Packers executive also admitted,” I just think we’re chasing instead of being chased which I think is cool. I think it’s exciting. It’s kind of like right when we got here, we were chasing the San Francisco 49ers, L.A. Rams, like it or not, are the world champions. Let’s go we got to compete with them every single day.”

One thing that the G.M. addressed was the inclusion of many Seahawks’ first timers like Myles Adams and Michael Jackson. He said,” We had a number of calls on Myles. People wanting to trade for him. We are just happy for him. The guy is the product of our environment and our culture, and he came in and took advantage of it. He’s a great guy and a very intense competitor. When Mike came here, he came on our practice squad and worked his tail off.”

The 51-year-old further added, “Karl Scott has done a great job working with him, and like we were talking about developing people, you can see it every single preseason game. And for him to finish the other night the way he finished, it was just really impressive. Really happy for him. He stayed on top, he was feeling people at the top of the route, getting his head around, playing physical. You couldn’t pick apart his game. He did a great job. Just really to watch him develop and watching Pete work with him after practice and stuff on his kick step and everything. I’m happy for him.”

He also said that the Seahawks’ special teams were getting better and better,” I would say over the last several days we really helped our special teams unit with Tanner (Muse) coming back, being on our practice squad; Darryl (Johnson) is a 6-6 guy that is a four-core special teams player as well as an outside pass rusher. Xavier (Crawford) has played special teams in the past and Isaiah (Dunn) has been a gunner, so I really think that we helped in that area. I would have to say special teams right now.”

Schneider also explained why the Seahawks chose Sean Mannion over Jacob Eason as the teams first choice QB. He explained,” It was really tough, Jacob did a great job with us. In our situation right now, we felt like that the staff, again with the collaboration, everybody was on the same page. Sean is probably going to end up being a head coach in this league at some point, very similar to Josh McCown. He’s a guy that is like another coach in the room for Geno (Smith) and Drew (Lock).”