With Doug Baldwin considering retirement, Seahawks choose another WR: WVU’s Gary Jennings
Russell Wilson is now going to be throwing a guy he used to coach. In basketball.
Seahawks fourth-round draft choice Gary Jennings, a slot wide receiver from West Virginia who scored 13 touchdowns for the Mountaineers last season, went to the same high school as Seattle’s franchise quarterback.
Wilson was Jennings’ YMCA youth basketball coach while both were at the K-through-12 Collegiate School in Richmond, Va. Jennings was a teammate on that YMCA hoops team of Wilson’s younger sister Anna Wilson, who is now a guard on Stanford’s NCAA tournament women’s basketball team.
“It’s legit the perfect fit,” the giddy Jennings said Saturday morning on the phone minutes after the Seahawks made his life’s dream come true in the NFL draft.
“I have no words right now. It’s just...”
It’s just serendipity, that Jennings will be catching passes starting in minicamp next month from his former youth hoops coach.
Yeah, Jennings was a tad happy the Seahawks called him Saturday.
With Doug Baldwin contemplating retirement, the Seahawks are stocking up on wide receivers.
The latest one: Gary Jennings, a 6-foot-1, 216-pound physical slot receiver from West Virginia who runs a 4.42-second 40-yard dash. The Seahawks selected him with the 120th-overall choice in round 4 of the NFL draft.
Jennings had 13 touchdown catches for WVU in the wide-open Big 12 Conference last season. That was tied for sixth in the Football Bowl Subdivision.
He is the second wide receiver Seattle has taken among its first five selections in this draft. The first was D.K. Metcalf, a hulking, 6-foot-3 speedster who runs a 4.33 40.
Just before drafting Jennings, Seattle made its sixth trade during the draft, and seventh this week, to move down six spots in the fourth round. Minnesota gave the Seahawks a sixth-round choice to move up.
Jennings is the fifth Seahawks selection in this draft. The first four Thursday and Friday: defensive end L.J. Collier, safety Marquise Blair, wide receiver D.K. Metcalf and linebacker Cody Barton.
The Seahawks had five more picks in the draft over rounds four through six. They didn’t have a choice in the seventh and final round for the first time since 2000.
That is, barring yet another trade. After moving down in the fourth round Saturday Seattle had made six trades, down and up, during this draft. They’d made seven deals this week, including the trade of Frank Clark to Kansas City Monday that got the Seahawks an additional first-round selection Friday.
Seattle used that choice on Collier.
This story was originally published April 27, 2019 at 10:12 AM.
