Seahawks 7-round mock draft: A drafted QB(!), a trade, a folk-hero RB, and a D-II surprise
The best player.
Media members, analysts, fans — heck, anyone with thumbs and a mobile phone — make mock drafts. We all focus on need. That is, predicting the draft based on each NFL team’s needs and then matching players to those needs.
We do this because we can. It’s easier to look at the past season or three and assess a team’s needs than it is to discern the inner workings of the Seahawks’ draft room to learn whom general manager John Schneider, coach Mike Macdonald and their staffs believe is the best player at each place Seattle will draft next week.
To be sure, Schneider acknowledges the Seahawks’ need to address offensive linemen over the seven rounds of the 2025 NFL draft that begin Thursday in Green Bay.
He knows we know it, too.
“Definitely, we need to. Everybody sees it,” John Schneider says.
Yet Seattle’s GM vows he will wait until days two and three of this draft to take a needed offensive lineman — if a wide receiver, cornerback, tight end or guy the Seahawks see as a stud at any other position is available when Seattle begins picking at 18th overall in the first round Thursday.
“We’ve made our biggest mistakes when we’ve, you know, pushed players up a board for need...Rob Peter to pay Paul, for offensive lines,” Schneider said.
“So you have to be careful. You have to take the best (player).. You really have to. The philosophy is, you take the best player, take the best person, best competitor.
“You know, when you try to stick something in there, it’s just...it’s hard. You kind of know you’re behind the eight ball already.
“You know, you’re drafting a guy that you’re like, ‘All right, Well, no, that guy’s a better player than him, but you don’t have a left guard.’”
Funny Schneider would use that example, because this year, it’s real. His 2025 Seahawks don’t have a left guard. They let underperforming veteran Laken Tomlinson leave after his only Seattle season ended in January.
Our annual Seahawks seven-round mock draft says the team will get that left guard among their 10 — that will become 11 — choices including five in the first 92 selections. And Seattle will get him early, in round one in a rare confluence of best player available and urgent need at the top of a draft.
We’re also predicting Schneider will do what he almost always does during drafts. He will trade.
And he will do something he’s done just twice in 15 previous Seahawks drafts as GM.
Yes, he will draft a quarterback.
Seahawks mock draft
Round 1 (18th-overall pick): Kelvin Banks Jr., guard, Texas
Tetairoa McMillan, the 6-foot-4 wide receiver star from Arizona the Seahawks hosted on a pre-draft visit, gets picked by the Colts four spots earlier. If that doesn’t happen, McMillan’s the pick here.
Instead, the Seahawks get a brick-wall left tackle from Texas, a force they think will start at left guard right away.
The 6-5, 315-pound Banks was the Lombardi and Outland Trophy award winner at tackle last season. He allowed just four(!) sacks in 1,544 pass blocks over three seasons for the Longhorns. He can “run off the ball,” the phrase Seahawks coach Mike Macdonald and Schneider keep using for the new outside-zone blocking system new offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak is installing in Seattle with new Seahawks and long-time NFL offensive assistant coaches Rick Dennison and John Benton.
Best player available meets need.
Schneider takes an offensive linemen in the first round for the fifth time in his 15 Seahawks drafts.
Round 2 (50th overall): Jayden Higgins, wide receiver, Iowa State
The 6-foot-4, 214-pound Higgins is a big, productive and smooth route runner. Those are Seahawks needs. They traded the big and productive DK Metcalf and released the smooth, productive, older Tyler Lockett this offseason.
Higgins is the same height and five pounds lighter than McMillan. Higgins has a wingspan more than 6 feet, 7 inches. He specializes in catching jump-ball passes over defenders. The Seahawks will love his competitiveness to seize the ball.
Schneider has taken a wide receiver in the first or second round five times in 15 drafts. This is the year to do it again.
Round 2 (52): Jalen Milroe, quarterback, Alabama
The News Tribune asked Schneider at the NFL scouting combine in late February what the TNT also asked him following the 2024 draft.
What is your long-term plan at quarterback?
“Well, hopefully, the (draft) board talks to us, right?” Schneider said Feb. 25 in Indianapolis. “It just hasn’t gone that way.”
It goes the Seahawks’ way this time. For only the third time in 16 drafts, Schneider selects a quarterback. He uses the pick he got from the Steelers in trading Metcalf last month to get a quarterback to develop for the future.
The huge-game-tested Milroe joins Russell Wilson and Alex McGough as the answer to a Seahawks trivia question.
Milroe recently was at team headquarters in Renton for a pre-draft visit. In recent years roughly one in five visits become Seahawks draft picks.
At 6-2, 217 pounds, Milroe has a powerful throwing arm. Yet it’s his explosiveness running outside the pocket, particularly on bootlegs, that fit what Kubiak wants to do with the Seahawks offense, maybe better than new starter Sam Darnold. Milroe’s inaccuracy at times throwing and his 16 touchdowns against 11 interceptions last Alabama season are concerns. It becomes Kubiak’s and new QBs coach Andrew Janocko, in with Kubiak from the Saints, to improve him.
They will have at least two years to do that. That’s essentially how long the 27-year-old Darnold’s new Seahawks contract is. Darnold’s heavily back-loaded three-year deal has so much money in the last year the team will have to decide before the 2027 begins whether Darnold has earned a second Seattle contract.
Round 3 (82): Projected trade, down with the Giants to net another 4th-round pick
The Seahawks have two picks in the third round. They don’t have any picks in the fourth round until the end, a compensatory choice at 137. Schneider hates idling through entire rounds.
So he trades Seattle’s 82nd pick in round three to New York, which will have already had the first selection of this round. Seattle moves down 17 spots, gets the Giants’ 99th-overall choice later in round three, plus New York’s pick at the top of round four.
It’s Schneider’s 39th trade of picks during or immediately before a draft in his 16 years as GM.
A trade’s going to happen. It’s only a matter of when.
Round 3 (92): Oluwafemi Oladejo, edge rusher, UCLA
Macdonald has said he will never have enough pass rushers, or too many versatile players who have produced at multiple positions, for his Seahawks defense.
The 6-4, 259-pound Oladejo is both.
He was a college inside linebacker until UCLA moved him outside to edge in 2024. Then he had 14 tackles for losses last season. That was the fourth-most in the Big Ten. His experience inside makes him an asset reading running plays and blocks.
Last year Macdonald drafted another inside-outside linebacker who had 15 tackles for losses his final college season. Tyrice Knight, a fourth round pick, was starting for the Seahawks by September of his rookie season.
The next month Seattle traded Baker to help get jolting middle linebacker Ernest Jones.
Oladejo becomes the pick the Seahawks got from the Raiders in the trade of Geno Smith to Las Vegas last month.
Round 3 (99): Harold Fannin Jr., tight end, Bowling Green
Kubiak’s system features tight ends in multiple ways: as receivers, H-backs, fullbacks, in-line blockers. That’s more than recent Seahawks offenses.
Fannin knows versatility.
The 6-3, 241-pound former safety and wide receiver broke out in 2024. He led the nation with 117 receptions and 1,555 receiving yards. He had 10 touchdowns receiving, and another score as a rusher. He is the first tight end to be the Mid-American Conference player of the year.
The Seahawks’ tight ends are Noah Fant, back for the final year of his contract, and impressive 2024 rookie AJ Barner. And that’s about it. Brady Russell is a tight end on the roster, but he’s been a special-teams mainstay. Russell has played only 2% and 4% of offensive snaps his first two seasons for Seattle.
Schneider sent scouts to Northwest Ohio in 2023 into ‘24 to study Mike Jerrell, the offensive tackle Seattle ultimately drafted in 2024. Jerrell played at Division-II Findlay. He was starting for the Seahawks by last October.
Findlay is 25 minutes from Bowling Green.
Yes, the Seahawks know all about Fannin and how he can fit them.
Round 4 (105) (in projected trade with NYG): Cam Skattebo, running back, Arizona State
This could quickly become the Seahawks’ most popular pick.
ASU’s All-American was a folk hero in the Sun Devils’ run to the College Football Playoffs last season. He is Kubiak’s kind of guy: A go-find-contact fullback with the skills and production of a lead running back. Skattebo willed ASU with 30 carries, 143 yards and two touchdowns to get within one play in double overtime of beating Texas and getting to the national semifinals.
Before that, he was a finalist for 2023 Paul Hornung Award given annually to the nation’s most versatile player.
Macdonald and Kubiak love versatile.
Kubiak says his offense is going to have a fullback. The Seahawks plan on having Kubiak their offense and dictating his system for more than this coming season. The draft is for two, three, four years down the road more than this year.
So is Skattebo.
They don’t need a running back, you say? Kenneth Walker is suddenly entering the final year of his rookie contract. He has yet to play a full season for Seattle because of multiple injuries at the sport’s most banged-up position. Backup Zach Charbonnet, the team’s second-round pick in 2023, has yet to prove he can be the Seahawks’ lead back.
Round 4 (137): CJ West, defensive tackle, Indiana
A three-technique defensive tackle at s 6-1 and 316 pounds. Scouts see West uses his quickness to beat blocks and make plays. He transferred from Kent State for his one season at Indiana then excelled in a varied, moving, scheming defensive front.
It’s what Macdonald likes to do with his Seahawks D-linemen.
Macdonald said at the combine he can’t have too many defensive linemen, either.
Oregon’s bigger run stopping tackle Jamaree Caldwell could be Seattle’s choice here. Broader, almost 20 pounds heavier and with a higher profile, Caldwell figures to be gone by now.
Round 5 (172): Nohl Williams, cornerback, California
Williams opened scouts’ eyes last season. He led the nation with seven interceptions for Cal in the Atlantic Coast Conference. He had 14 interceptions and 19 pass breakups in five college seasons, the first three at UNLV.
NFL people like Williams’ length and versatility in press and zone coverages, traits the Seahawks have valued in cornerbacks since Schneider became GM.
Macdonald will love adding to competition among Devon Witherspoon, Riq Woolen and more in Seattle’s secondary.
Round 5 (175): Bryce Cabeldue, tackle, Kansas
Cabeldue is another prospect the Seahawks had visit them at their Renton facility this spring. He wasn’t invited to the combine. Then again, neither was Matt Hasselbeck.
The 6-4, 306-pound Cabeldue played tackle for Kansas. He allowed three sacks and eight pressures on 344 pass-blocking snaps last college season. Scouts see him as a likely guard. He has low leverage with good quickness off the ball.
Sensing a theme? For the first time in years, the Seahawks have one for their offensive line.
Round 7 (223): Jackson Slater, guard, Sacramento State
Yes, a true college guard — but with versatility (of course). Slater also started some at tackle at Sac State.
He was a 4.0 student at Newport High School, a couple freeway exits north of Seahawks headquarters in Renton. His father John played football at Western Washington.
Jackson Slater impressed league scouts at the Senior Bowl in Mobile, Alabama, in late January. The Seahawks were the only team to meet with him twice there. They then hosted him recently on a local-prospect visit.
The Seahawks not only need a left guard, they went through three right guards last season (though they like what they got there at the end from rookie Sataoa Laumea, a sixth-round pick last year).
Round 7 (234): Micah Cretsinger, linebacker, Saginaw Valley State
Schneider has drafted a Division-II player twice in the previous three years: wide receiver Dareke Young from Lenoir-Rhyne in 2022 and Jerrell from Findlay last year.
The (you guessed it) versatile Cretsinger makes it three D-II guys in four drafts to Seattle.
The finalist for the Cliff Harris Award as the national small-college defensive player of the year last season has NFL size; he’s 6-2 and 240 pounds. He’s the same height and 10 pounds heavier than Jones, Seattle’s starting middle linebacker. Cretsinger is two inches taller and seven pounds heavier than Knight, who started nine games for the Seahawks as a rookie in 2024.
Cretsinger played inside, off-ball and outside, on-the-ball linebacker at Saginaw Valley State. He was a tackling machine in the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference. He played in all 44 games he was on the roster for in four years for Saginaw Valley. He was a D-II All-American as a junior, in 2023. That season he tied an NCAA Division-II record with four interception returns for touchdowns; he’s only the fifth D-II player to ever do that.
Cretsinger was all-state out in track in the long jump as a three-sport standout at Jackson High School in his native Michigan.
This story was originally published April 18, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
