RENTON, Wash. – Hail, John Schneider. Nailed it.
The Seahawks need to draft immediate help on the offensive line was not a “lazy narrative” at all, despite Schneider’s claim it was such early this week.
He was playing possum. Engaging in a little liars’ poker that isn’t unusual in the NFL at draft time. A little verbal juke, perhaps, to mislead other teams.
By selecting guard Grey Zabel with the 18th pick of the first round of the NFL draft on Thursday, Schneider continued his recent streak of sharp identification of high-end talent. (See Jaxson Smith-Njigba, Devon Witherspoon, Brian Murphy, etc.)
And it feels as if Schneider has snapped another kind of streak, of struggling to find an interior lineman with long-term potential in the draft.
Zabel, from North Dakota State, can be plugged in at either guard or center – the most obvious area of need in recent seasons.
He doesn’t score touchdowns, but there’s nobody they could have added at that point of the first round who could improve the quality of the Seahawks’ offense more when the 2025 season rolls around.
After Zabel’s phone interview, it became clear that he’s going to be somebody fans will love. Down-to-earth, humble, mid-American values.
Beyond that, he seems a legitimate throwback, embodying old-time football, focusing on whipping the man in front of him, playing with joy in the mud and blood and snot bubbles.
His answers to questions could have come from Chuck Bednarik or Fuzzy Thurston, transmitted via Western Union.
He started almost every answer with a one-word preface: “Yup.” He added articulate and thoughtful answers thereafter, but the start was always a hint of Gary Cooper Americana.
It runs in the family.
He told about celebrating a win last winter, getting into a three-point stance and going one-on-one in an alley and firing out against his 60-year-old father for family bragging rights. (His dad was a college player, a lifetime Dakota farmer, and apparently, he can still scrap.)
What was Zabel going to do after finishing his media duties? “Start diving into these Busch Lights.”
They won’t drink themselves.
His favorite play to block: “A-Gap Power.” Offensive coaches call it “God’s play.” Block down, pull the off-side guard, pound it up the gut.
Dare them to stop it. Spit out any loose teeth, line up and run it again.
He’s 6-foot-6, 316 pounds, powerful and athletic.
Athletic? At his size, he has a 36.5-inch vertical leap. Do you need a guard who can dunk? No, but that measurement is indicative of extreme explosiveness.
Somebody online puts together a Relative Athletic Score based on combine and test measurements. Zabel’s combined RAS was enormous – 9.49 out of 10. By comparison, Hawks tackle Charles Cross, taken with the ninth pick in the first round in 2022, was 7.58.
Hall of Fame Hawk tackle Walter Jones had an RAS of 8.59. So, yeah, Zabel will fit nicely.
How about character? Consider Zabel couldn’t be lured away from NDSU despite NIL offers from any number of Power Four schools making huge monetary offers because “you have to stay true to who you are.”
He added: “My head coach called me stupid for not taking the money.”
In excess of six figures?
“Yup.”
Guards generally don’t get drafted highly or make huge contracts because they are universally undervalued.
Typically, among the offensive lineman fraternity, guards are considered to have the least value and are most easily replaced.
The Seahawks haven’t been able to do it on the offensive front. And the resulting inconsistency in the running game and pass protection has kept the Seahawks’ offense far below full efficiency.
The chronic mistake is looking at offensive linemen as a single entity, a player exerting his physicality in a vacuum. But they never operate in that manner. They work in collaboration with four other men, and there is a special skill to that which can’t be understood in individual workouts.
So, is Zabel, at one of the guards, or perhaps even center, worth a mid-first-round pick?
Absolutely.
A really talented guard, like Zabel, elevates the collective level of performance of the entire line. If he’s on the right side, he makes Abe Lucas better at right tackle, because the two positions work in tandem so often.
Is Zabel a Steve Hutchinson, the last Seahawk All-Pro guard?
Maybe not quite, yet. Hutch, drafted with the No. 17 pick in 2001, walked on the Seahawks field fully prepared and immediately elite.
But he was almost a different species, a hybrid human/grizzly. He had only one setting: Maul.
A more comparable in to my view, is Max Unger. Unger, a second-rounder out of Oregon, played guard as a rookie and then advanced to All-Pro level at center. I could see that happening with Zabel.
In fact, the trading of Unger to the Saints in 2014, in retrospect, may have led to the unraveling in Seahawks offensive line fortunes.
Zabel will bring athleticism, toughness, smarts, and fearlessness to the offensive line.
So, did John Schneider start off the 2015 draft with an absolute A+ selection?
Yup.