Tory Horton's eerie similarity to former Seahawks WR

Healthy Horton unlocks Seahawks future at receiver

When watching Seahawks 2025 highlight videos, the most intriguing figure from the first half of the season has to be rookie receiver Tory Horton. Not only because Horton pops up way more often than you’d expect him to after missing more than half of the season, but also due to the fact that fans never really had to watch him struggle or regress because he got injured.

Horton was targeted four times in half of the contests that he played in and he caught all five of his touchdowns in those four games.

That’s incredible efficiency for any player, let alone a rookie, let alone a day three pick.

Re-living those highlights this week, I was compelled to take another look at Horton’s draft resume and for reasons that are probably less important than I could make them sound I compared him to other receivers who fit this profile:

• Between 6’2-6’3

• Between 190-200 lbs

• Drafted on day 3

Sorting these players by touchdowns during their rookie seasons, Horton stands out as the first to catch five touchdowns since 1956(!!!) and he did it in only eight games. The others on the list played between 11 and 14 games.

Pushing the needle down to four touchdowns, we see Kutztown University graduate Andre Reed, a Hall of Fame receiver who was drafted in the fourth round and as a rookie caught 48 passes for 637 yards in 1985. Not to compare Horton to Reed and say that Seattle’s going to get 13,000 career yards out of him, but in terms of size and speed (Reed’s 40 time is unknown but has been described as being in the 4.4 range, same as Horton) and getting overlooked in the draft there might be some dots to connect.

If that’s a stretch, can I offer you D.J. Hackett instead?

A fifth round pick in 2004 out of Colorado, Hackett stands 6’2 (same as Horton) and weighed 199 (3 lbs heavier than Horton’s listed weight) and ran a 4.53.

Horton and Hackett both grew up in California (separated by a 3-hour drive), they both played two seasons at one college prior to transferring to a university in Colorado (Colorado State in Horton’s case), and both were consistent scoring threats who had 10 touchdowns during their sophomore campaigns.

Horton averaged 1,133 yards and 8 touchdowns in his first two seasons at Colorado State. Hackett had 1,013 yards and 7 touchdowns as a senior at Colorado.

Hackett’s quarterback at Colorado was Joel Klatt and Joel Klatt once called Tory Horton a key player for Colorado State to beat Deion Sanders.

Eerie!

As a rookie in 2005 (he didn’t play in 2004, the year he was drafted), Hackett appeared in 13 games and caught 28 passes for 400 yards and two touchdowns on 42 targets. If you doubled Horton’s stats on 22 targets last season, he still would not have 28 catches or 400 yards. But when it turned “touchdown time”, Horton always clocked in.

Hackett caught 0 passes in the playoffs, but even half a decade later was still pissed about the Super Bowl as established to Steve Harvey on Family Feud:

After the departure of Joe Jurevicius and injuries to Bobby Engram in 2006, Hackett’s stock went up from WR4 to WR3 and he caught 45 passes for 610 yards on 66 targets.

Primed for a much larger starting role in 2007, Hackett suffered a serious ankle injury in Week 1 and missed almost two months. When he returned, Hackett had 336 yards and 3 touchdowns in his first four games back, emphasizing that he did have the potential to be the Seahawks WR1. Unfortunately, he re-injured his ankle and missed another month.

When he returned for Seattle’s first playoff game that year, Hackett 101 yards and a touchdown. But then he suffered a groin injury and limited the next week, only had 15 yards in the Seahawks’ blowout divisional loss to the Packers.

Seattle allowed Hackett to leave in 2008 free agency, partly because of prior financial commitments to receivers like Nate Burleson, a former star at Nevada which is also where the career started for…Tory Horton.

Hackett’s 2-year, $3.5 million contract with the Panthers turned out to be a bust for Carolina. To no one’s surprise, he was plagued by injuries and the Panthers released him after the season. He spent training camp with Washington but never made an NFL team again and his career was over at 27.

There are comparisons from Hackett to Horton that would give the Seahawks hope that they won’t need to look for a WR2 to complement Jaxon Smith-Njigba for the next 5 years, and clearly there was a chemistry developing between him and Sam Darnold that is rare for a fifth round pick to establish that quickly.

There is also the thing they have in common that Seattle prays doesn’t show up again, which is the number of games missed due to injury.

Horton missed the second half of his final college season with a serious knee injury. Then he missed the second half of 2025 with a shin injury. Horton has been sidelined during spring activities, but appeared at voluntary offseason training this week:

At this point, if Horton just gets availability, he’s proven that he has the ability.

Some other names that popped up during my search:

• WR Marvin Jones (7,421 career yards)

• WR T.J. Houshmandzadeh (7,237 career yards)

It’s not that those are the norm, just as Andre Reed is the exception. More of the “successful” day three receivers in this profile would be Hackett, Louis Murphy, Josh Reynolds, or Tajae Sharpe. But you look at Houshmandzadeh and he only had 228 yards as a rookie. Marvin Jones only had 201 yards. Hackett didn’t play!

By this measure, Horton is already ahead of the mark.

We asked 100 Seahawks fans, "name a touchdown that Tory Horton scored as a rookie” and the survey says…

There were six to choose from (5 receiving, 1 punt return). Not bad for half a season’s work.

Seaside Joe 2622