Seahawks draft Jadarian Price!

Sam Darnold gets help behind him as Seattle moves forward

The Seattle Seahawks did the second-most likely thing they were expected to do on Thursday night, drafting Notre Dame running back Jadarian Price with the 32nd overall pick.

Aside from trading down, Price was by far the most popular mock draft pick for the Seahawks in the first round and with no other teams apparently overwhelmed with his resume—which as I wrote recently is shockingly light for a first round pick—he was there at 32 without anyone being surprised.

It became so expected that it felt too easy. Sometimes easy is all that matters.

As a running back, Price has a chance to step in as Seattle’s Week 1 starter against a yet-to-be-named team on a Wednesday.

He’ll face little competition from the Seahawks current crop of running backs including Emanuel Wilson, George Holani, Cam Akers, and Kenny McIntosh. Given the timing and severity of Zach Charbonnet’s knee injury, he’s not expected back earlier than October and this pick sends up a glaring signal that Seattle won’t be in a hurry to re-sign or extend the 2027 free agent.

If all goes to plan, Jadarian Price will be the Seahawks featured running back for the next four seasons, 2026 to 2029, and there’s a fifth-year option on the end of the deal to boot. However because he is a running back, fifth-year options are rarely picked up, especially in the last third of the first round.

I won’t shy away from the fact that I did not believe the Seahawks were going to draft Price here.

A running back who never started a game in college, had one career game with 15 carries, once tore his Achilles, hasn’t done much work in the passing game, and is considered a fumbling liability, Price going in the first round still surprises me and I’ll give two reasons why I think it happened that have nothing to do with whether or not he’s a good pick:

1) This draft class is really bad.

We can point to the Rams drafting quarterback Ty Simpson at 13th overall as evidence of that. A quarterback roundly projected to go in the late 20s at the earliest, it seems that L.A. was so underwhelmed by the other options—as were teams that didn’t trade up—that they decided to pick Matthew Stafford’s potential successor instead.

Not at pick 30. At pick 13.

2) This running back class is really bad.

Whereas Price’s teammate Jeremiyah Love is being hailed as a worthy comparison to players like Christian McCaffrey and Saquon Barkley (we’ll see about that one too), there’s relatively little support for this idea that “you can find starters in the fourth round” when it comes to the 2026 class.

Everything we’ve read over the last three months falls under this idea that if you don’t get Love or Price, you might just be getting a running back who could be a part of a committee. Names like Jonah Coleman, Emmett Johnson, and Mike Washington did little more than generate a little bit of interest around their athletic profiles and testing times.

But I never saw anyone go to bat for any other running backs as potential first round—or even second round—picks.

If the Seahawks did not draft Price with their first pick, they weren’t going to get Price with their second pick.

So this appears to be John Schneider’s admission to the world that of every running back on Seattle’s roster and every other running back in the 2026 class that he had a chance to draft, Jadarian Price is the only one who he believes could replace Kenneth Walker.

Is it a good pick?

It is hypocritical when people say “draft grades are so stupid!” on one side of their mouth and “I hate this pick!!!” out of the other.

There are certainly times we can question the value of certain picks, especially when it pertains to positions in the draft (if we all agree that drafting a punter in the first round is idiotic, then we agree that there ARE positional value debates in the draft to some degree), but we also have to remember that Jadarian Price is a Seahawk now.

I was never rooting against Price to be drafted at 32, I just did not expect it.

And over the next five months leading into the 2026 season, Price will be one of the most featured and talked about players on the team—especially when it comes to Hard Knocks—and when he gets his first touch of his career we will not care where he was drafted.

When Walker won Super Bowl MVP, did a single Seahawks fan who gave the pick a “D” or an “F” in 2022 cross their arms and say, “ugh, i still think that was a horrible pick!!!”

I mean, sure, yes, there are people who will always argue against taking a running back that early in the draft. But it didn’t stop the Seahawks from winning the Super Bowl with Walker as the starting back and as long as Seattle continues to have team success there won’t be any reason to go back in time and complain about picks.

I’m excited to find out more about Jadarian Price in the weeks and months ahead. I have little doubt that if Schneider liked him at 32, even in a weak class, that it means the Seahawks believe that as long as he’s healthy he has the potential to be one of the best running backs in the NFC and soon. Possibly as soon as now.

What are your thoughts on the Seahawks drafting Jadarian Price over edge, corner, and any other available options?

Seahawks have picks 64 and 96 on Friday!