The Seahawks just don’t take many FCS players, let alone in Round 1.
One of the most common names linked to the Seattle Seahawks in mock drafts (fan-generated or from professional draft analysts) is North Dakota State offensive lineman Grey Zabel. He has the positional versatility to play literally anywhere on the line but projects best as either a center of a guard, and we know the Seahawks need improvements along the interior OL.
From a needs perspective combined with the fact that he’s a Senior Bowl standout, Zabel fits the Seahawks quite well. While I don’t disagree with the idea of Zabel on the Seahawks, I’m skeptical that he’ll be taken at No. 18. It has nothing to do with the fact that he’d be a likely guard, which in itself would be uncharacteristic for a John Schneider draft to draft one so early, but something a little deeper than that. Yes, even deeper than the potential snarky comment regarding Schneider and offensive linemen.
John Schneider almost never drafts FCS players
The Football Championship Subdivision is a level below the Football Bowl Subdivision. Once upon a time the FCS was Division I-AA and the FBS was Division I-A. The Seahawks have rarely drafted FCS alums, even from a powerhouse like North Dakota State.
2011: S Mark LeGree – Appalachian State (was an FCS school at the time), 5th round
2012: CB Jeremy Lane – Northwestern St (LA), 6th round
2013: DT Jared Smith – New Hampshire, 7th round
2015: CB Tye Smith – Towson, 5th round
That’s four drafted FCS players out of a possible 213 since Schneider became Seahawks GM in 2010. All of those players were off the board no earlier than Round 5 and none since 2015. Schneider has drafted more Division II players (David Moore, Dareke Young, Michael Jerrell, Michael Bowie, Ty Powell) in that same span. They have obviously been willing to dip into the UDFA market for an FCS player like Jalen Sundell, but not a whole lot else beyond that.
Zabel would not only be the first FCS player the Seahawks have drafted in a decade, he’d be the first one taken in Round 1 by Seattle since Terry Taylor in 1984.
John Schneider also has a type for Round 1-2 picks
This was a comment left by Field Gulls deputy editor John Gilbert in one of the Pre-Snap Reads articles recently.
The article in question was from 2018 and included extensive data on the common theme among Schneider’s early-round picks:
And there we see that every single player John Schneider has drafted in the first two rounds during his tenure as the general manager for the Seahawks has been a starter for at least two full seasons in college. There have been zero exceptions to this, so while the sample size is still limited to just fourteen players, Schneider definitely seems to have a preference for players who have multiple years starting in college.
This pseudo-requirement has been breached a couple of times since that article was published. Boye Mafe, Seattle’s 2022 second-round pick, only started his final year at Minnesota. Byron Murphy II was also a one-year starter at Texas before going at No. 16 last year. I guess Jaxon Smith-Njigba escapes this by playing a few games in 2022 before shutting it down due to injury.
The evidence is nevertheless overwhelming that the Seahawks and Schneider prefer multi-year starters from major conferences. Zabel meets the criteria of a multi-year starter but North Dakota State isn’t in a major FBS conference.
This does not mean that the Seahawks won’t select Zabel at No. 18 (or somewhere else in the first round). Seattle previously didn’t draft any corners in Rounds 1-2 from 2010 until Devon Witherspoon came along in 2023 at No. 5 overall. Zabel could be that exception to the rule and another sign of changing draft strategies in Renton. There is, however, a big sample size difference when looking at not taking any players from a specific position early (in Schneider’s case, 24 early-round slots) and not picking FCS talent at all over a decade’s worth of draft classes.
Should Zabel not be on the Seahawks’ Round 1 board, don’t be surprised or disappointed. However, that isn’t to say they wouldn’t eye someone like Sacramento State’s Jackson Slater in that Round 4-5 range. He’s from Bellevue and met with Seattle twice at the Senior Bowl, plus Day 3 is where Schneider has historically exclusively been most comfortable with FCS players.
We’ll see in a few hours if Zabel is such a unique prospect for the Seahawks that Schneider is willing to deviate from his philosophy.