It didn’t take long for Richard Seymour to win the Patriots over.
In a recent interview on NFL Network, Scott Pioli shared what convinced him Seymour was the right player to select in the first round of the 2001 NFL Draft. The longtime executive made a scouting trip down to the University of Georgia, where Seymour was a standout player, in Oct. 2000.
“I saw how serious Richard was, how he was approaching things as a professional, I was like, ‘OK, I think this guy gets it, he’s going to fit from a culture standpoint,'” Pioli said.
Seymour was elected last week to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in his fourth year on the ballot. He spent 12 seasons with the Patriots, playing in four AFC Championship Games and four Super Bowls, including victories in Super Bowls XXXVI, XXXVIII and XXXIX. In addition, he was a first team All-Pro in three consecutive seasons (2003-05) and second team twice (2006, 2011). Seymour was voted to seven Pro Bowls and named to the NFL’s All-Decade Team of the 2000s.
Pioli knew his eyes weren’t lying.
“Sometimes as a scout, we love to look at analytics, we love to look at times, we love to look at those things, but sometimes you see and hear things as a scout that tell you about explosion, about power,” Pioli said. “When Richard hit the goalpost, and swatted it, [with] the quickness, and the explosion, and then the movement, and the smoothness, and the athleticism, I could hear and see what this guy was made of. I was in awe. I hadn’t seen anyone that big, that explosive up close.”
The Patriots took Seymour with the No. 6 overall pick in that year’s draft. It didn’t take him long to become a lynchpin of the defense.
“To me, Richard is the total package,” Pioli said. “He’s not only a Hall of Fame player, because he had a Hall of Fame career, but he was truly — and is truly — a Hall of Fame person.”