Much of Pierce County celebrates as Connor Wedington comes home for his Seahawks chance
Connor Wedington turned down his first chance to stay home and play.
Now he’s got a second one. In the NFL. With his favorite team, the one he used to seek autographs from as a kid at training camp in Renton.
Yet he’s not satisfied with just that.
The Tacoma native, former Sumner High School star and The News Tribune All-Area player of the year in 2016 initially committed to the University of Washington. He changed to Stanford in an attention-grabbing switch early in 2017. After years as a play-making wide receiver and kick returner at Stanford, he expected to get drafted last month.
The disappointment of not getting picked in the NFL draft vanished with one phone call from Pete Carroll. When Seattle’s veteran coach finished recruiting Wedington on the easiest sell ever to sign a rookie free-agent contract with the Seahawks, celebrations erupted across a swath of Pierce County.
Wedington chuckled at the truth of that, during his first weekend on the field as number 87 in the blue jersey of his hometown NFL team, at Seattle’s rookie minicamp.
“Yeah, they are very excited,” he said. “My little sisters, they were SO happy I get to stay home. My mom. My dad. My step dad. Step mom. Everybody was really excited. My brother, as well.
“And I’m excited. This is a chance to come out, compete, earn a spot on the field and go help this team win.”
Wedington, 21, was so pumped to come back home, he turned down multiple NFL contract offers that included better money. Some had more guaranteed cash than the Seahawks offered amid a deluge of calls he got as the draft was ending.
The Seahawks reportedly gave him a $20,000 signing bonus. That’s a lot for Seattle. It’s believed to equal the highest bonus among the team’s 13 undrafted rookies it signed this month.
Still, other teams offered more. He turned them down to come home for the chance to follow the undrafted paths Seahawks Doug Baldwin (from Stanford) and Jermaine Kearse (from Pierce County) took before him.
“That process, it is pretty hectic—but at the same time it was a blessful process, because there was a good amount of teams that wanted me,” he said. “And you are right, I did have—in terms of monetary value—there were other teams that offered more, in terms of signing bonus and guaranteed.
“But at the end of the day, this is home. I feel like this is a great opportunity, and this is a team I want to be a part of.”
The field Wedington practiced on last week at the Virginia Mason Athletic Center along Lake Washington is the same one he watched Walter Jones, Lofa Tatupu and the Seahawks practice on during a training camp he attended as a young fan sitting on the big grass berm about a dozen years ago.
“Oh, yeah, going undrafted, obviously it’s not preferred. But to end up here, I think everything happens for a reason,” Wedington said.
He smiled.
“This is a hometown team, the Seahawks. You know, I’ve been a fan since I was about 3 years old. I actually remember coming to a training camp here when I was about 8 years old, as well.
“So coming back here and playing for this team, it’s amazing. And I can’t wait just to continue to grow with this team and learn under the players ahead of me.”
The 6-foot, 189-pound Wedington said he was expecting to get drafted on the third and last day of the draft, anywhere from round five to seven. The San Francisco 49ers, who play 13 miles from the Stanford, talked to Wedington before the draft.
But he never got that call.
He got Carroll’s.
“Connor was a guy I was really excited about as we got into the (rookie) free-agency thing, because of his background, from the area and all of that,” the Seahawks coach said. “He was really excited to have the chance to play here, in front of the people he knows and the team he loves and all of that.
“So I was excited to help make that happen.”
Relying more on rookie free agents
This year, more than any previous of Carroll’s and general manager John Schneider’s 12 drafts with Seattle—in fact, more than any in the team’s 46-draft history—the Seahawks focused on recruiting and signing undrafted free agents.
Beginning last summer Carroll and Schneider made a choice to trade draft choices for this year of limited scouting and evaluation because of the coronavirus pandemic in exchange for acquiring proven veterans such as Jamal Adams, Carlos Dunlap and Gabe Jackson, instead. The result: just three picks in the 2021 draft. That was the fewest in team history, and the fewest (by five) of Seattle’s Carroll and Schneider era. It was the fewest in the league since the 2009 New York Jets.
The domino effect of that was the Seahawks, who have played more undrafted free agents in prominent roles than almost any other NFL team the last decade (Baldwin, Michael Bennett, Kearse, Thomas Rawls, Poona Ford), now have more spots than ever for rookie free agents to win, jobs draft picks have won in previous training camps.
Wedington can win one as a fourth wide receiver on a team that has only two proven veterans returning from last season: DK Metcalf and Tyler Lockett. Seattle used its top draft choice last month on D’Wayne Eskridge, a wide receiver from Western Michigan with 4.3-second speed in the 40-yard dash. Eskridge zoomed past defenders throughout the rookie minicamp last weekend.
Being a second-round pick gives Eskridge the inside track on the third wide-receiver spot. Freddie Swain, a sixth-round choice last year who impressed coaches and quarterback Russell Wilson in limited time as a rookie, will compete with Eskridge and with a pack of others as the third and fourth wide receivers.
Wedington is a versatile member of that pack.
He was a star running back and defensive back at Sumner High School. He committed to stay home and play at Washington. A month after the TNT named him its player of the year for 2016, Wedington met with Stanford coach David Shaw.
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.
When healthy, Wedington shined as an impact wide receiver and kick returner who was also a running back as a freshman. He led the Pac-12 in kick returns in 2019.
Baldwin, also a wide receiver from Stanford, and UW’s Kearse, from Lakes High School, first made the Seahawks on special teams. Then they became starters and Super Bowl-champion millionaires.
A possible fit
Seattle’s kick-return job is open for 2021. Coaches have been reducing Lockett’s Pro Bowl-role as a kick returner for years. David Moore had been doing it more in recent seasons. Moore signed with Carolina in free agency this offseason. Wedington and Eskridge could become candidates on kickoff returns, with cornerback D.J. Reed returning to perhaps continue in the punt-return role he had at the end of Seattle’s 2020 season.
Wedington seems to fit Carroll’s credo for rookies to make the Seahawks: the more you can do...
“He’s a versatile athlete,” Carroll said. “I think he went to Stanford as a running back and went to receiver and was going to go back. He has that versatility.
“Built well. Really strong kid. Bright kid. ...We look forward to the versatility that he brings. Looks like a big, strong kid. Did a nice job out here in the first couple days.”
NFL teams didn’t draft him because Wedington missed chunks of two seasons during his four years at Stanford. He was out nine games in 2018. He missed the final three games in 2020 while as Stanford’s captain.
While enrolled in the Bay Area he never stayed too far from home—or from the Seahawks.
Wedington came back to the Seattle-Tacoma area during Stanford’s offseasons and summers to train at the Ford Perfomance Center in Bellevue. That’s where he got to know Bobby Wagner and K.J. Wright. The veteran linebackers and team leaders are among many veteran Seahawks players who train at the center founded and run by Tracy Ford, a former player for Idaho, Portland State and in the Canadian Football League.
“Bobby and K.J. (who is currently unsigned) those are two guys I’ve been training around since I was about 16 years old,” Wedington said. “I was going up to Ford Sports Performance and they were in there—before they got the big gym. We call it the ‘small gym’ now.
“I was fortunate to grow a relationship with them, before I was even a Seahawk.
“Now, they are my teammates. It’s pretty surreal.”
Well, the All-Pro Wagner is his teammate.
Wright remains a free agent. The longest-tenured Seahawk’s contract expired after last season. Last weekend in their minicamp the team’s coaches began converting 2020 rookie defensive end Darrell Taylor to the strongside-spot Wright played last year. Yet Wright and the Seahawks still hope to work out a deal for him to return for 2021.
Wedington hopes to work through organized team activities (OTAs) into another Seahawks training camp in Renton in late July.
This time, he’ll be there to win a roster spot, not to watch and get autographs.
“Like I said, everything happens for a reason,” he said. “I’ve got a chip on my shoulder. And I’m ready to compete.”
This story was originally published May 19, 2021 at 1:10 PM.
