Tacoma native, Sumner High star Connor Wedington says he’s signing with Seahawks
Connor Wedington is coming home for a chance to play for the Seahawks.
The Tacoma native and former Sumner High School football legend who became The News Tribune’s All-Area player of the year in 2016 posted on Twitter Saturday night he was signing with the Seahawks.
The former Washington Huskies commit is an undrafted rookie free agent wide receiver, 6 feet tall, out of Stanford.
“I’m coming home!!! I’m so grateful for this opportunity to play for the @Seahawks. Time to show y’all what I can do #AllGlorytoGod,” Wedington posted on his account, @ConnorWedington, Saturday evening.
The Seahawks don’t announce their undrafted free-agent signings until all of them have signed their contracts. That’s usually well into the following week, or weeks.
Seattle is likely to have more rookie free agents than ever this offseason. The team had just three selections in this weekend’s draft. That’s the fewest in Seahawks history, and fewest in the NFL since the 2009 New York Jets.
Seattle is also reportedly signing a center, the position its fans wanted the team to draft this weekend.
Pier-Olivier Lestage, from the University of Montreal, is 6-3 and 312 pounds. He earned All-Canadian following the nation’s 2019 U Sports season. Montreal reportedly relied on a physical rushing offense to win the Quebec Conference championship. Lestage was invited to the virtual East-West Shrine Game for college all-stars this winter, with virtual training sessions from NFL coaches because of the coronavirus pandemic.
The Seahawks are also adding North Carolina Central cornerback Bryan Mills, according to Bryan Mills. Mills is 6-1, 174 pounds with, yes, coach Pete Carroll’s prerequisite 32-inch arms for Seahawks cornerbacks.
General manager John Schneider said this weekend he sees his Seahawks as particularly attractive this year for rookie free agents. Seattle has been among the league’s leading teams in keeping and playing undrafted rookies into the regular season. Doug Baldwin, Jermaine Kearse and Thomas Rawls are among those who have gone from undrafted to Seahawks starters and stardom.
Plus, the rookie pool for draft picks that undrafted free agents has to compete against has never been smaller in Seattle. The previous low for Seahawks picks in a draft during the Schneider-Pete Carroll era that began in 2010 had been eight.
“I think we’re going to be very attractive with just three picks,” Schneider said. “When you’re recruiting these guys after the draft—in the last several years that we’ve had seven, eight, 10 picks—so it’s been hard for us to recruit guys and try to convince them, whether it’s the area scouts, the coaches, when we’re working on these guys to convince them that they’re going to have a clean opportunity.
“I think just naturally when you have three draft choices, I think we’re going to be a very, very attractive landing spot. ...We’re going to start recruiting our butts off.”
To say Wedington was a student at Sumner High School a half-dozen years ago undersells how dominant he was there as a running back.
In the first eight games of his senior season at Sumner, Wedington had 13 touchdowns of at least 35 yards, and seven touchdowns of more than 60 yards — by rush, reception, catch, kick return and punt return.
“He reminds me of Barry Sanders and Walter Payton in the open field,” Sumner coach Keith Ross said. “I tell Connor, ‘If you get through the hole, the hole that we block for you, then you be Connor.’
“It’s amazing his patience to set up tacklers. I can’t teach that. Nobody can teach that. You can’t go anywhere and pay anyone to teach you that. That’s Connor’s God-given ability.”
A month after the TNT named him its player of the year for 2016, Wedington met with Stanford coach David Shaw. That was the end of his commitment to UW.
He decommitted from Washington a few days later. He announced in January 2017 his commitment to Stanford on a slick video of him snowboarding at Snoqualmie Pass. His did crazy jumps and the camera showed the underside of his snowboard that had the Stanford University logo on it.
He had 106 receptions for 971 yards and a touchdown during his Stanford career. He was honorable mention in the Pac-12 in 2019 for kick returning. He had 25 returns for 685 yards in his college career, and led the Pac-12 with an average of 28.1 yards per kickoff return in 2020.
“If you know me, you understand two things about me: I am passionate about growing and positively impacting people,” he told Bay Area reporters when he declared for the NFL draft in January. “I’m excited to see what the future holds because I truly believe God has a plan for me that is way beyond my scope of vision.
“Throughout my entire life, I’ve always been a dream chaser. I’ve worked relentlessly towards every goal I set.”
Carroll, the former USC coach and recruiting whiz, was already looking forward to adding more rookie free agents beyond Wedington, Lestage and Mills.
“We’re fired up for recruiting. As John always says, you tell a trapper by his furs,” Carroll joked, because Schneider never says that. “When these guys start making their calls about bringing guys in, the pressure is on. But we’ll found out. We’re going to find out who the real recruiters are.”
This story was originally published May 1, 2021 at 6:11 PM.
