Scouts beaming. GM with a wonder look: Day 2 NFL draft ‘a cool day in Seahawks history’
At the end of the evening, the draft room broke out in cheers. You could hear them across the building.
Scouts walked the hallways of the team headquarters beaming. It was like they’d just gotten new puppies. Three of them.
General manager John Schneider, the man who has been missing on recent drafts he now needs to hit, smiled. It was a noticeably satisfied grin. He peered up with a look of wonder, as if he was viewing a shooting star.
Sure, it was a Friday in April, 4 1/2 months until the games begin. It was the middle day of a seven-round crapshoot of prospects that will, maybe or won’t pan out.
Yet this, one trade and three players selected in the second and third rounds, was one of the most invigorating NFL draft days in recent Seahawks history. Probably one of the better ones in the 16 years Schneider has been GM in charge of these.
Schneider looked like it. He sounded like it.
“It’s a cool day in Seahawks history. It really is,” Schneider said late Friday.
The GM sat back. He smiled again.
On this Seattle TGIF, the team that’s won 19 games the last two seasons, that changed coaches and regimes last season yet hasn’t made the playoffs in three of the last four years:
- Traded up to take Nick Emmanwori, the big, Kyle Hamilton, Kam Chancellor-sized safety from South Carolina the Seahawks almost traded back into round one Thursday night to get.
- Snagged big, down-the-field tight end Elijah Arroyo from Miami. He’s a 6-5 stud Schneider said would have been a top-15 pick if not for his two college seasons limited by injury to the same knee.
And for only the third time in 16 drafts, the Seahawks finally selected a quarterback, for the future: Alabama’s Jalen Milroe Friday night.
“The people, the competitors, the athletes, they just feel like...they just, they all just feel special. I can’t describe it any different than to say they feel special,” Schneider said, after the third of the draft’s seven rounds ended.
“Like, like they feel different. And, man, it’s a great thing.”
This, on top of Thursday’s first-round pick Grey Zabel to come in and be the starting left guard immediately has Schneider, Macdonald and their Seahawks decision-makers believing they have the young players to finish turning the corner they approached in a 10-win 2024 season.
“Like I said (Thursday) night, respecting the group of players that’s here right now to add these guys in, it’s gonna be outstanding,” Schneider said.
Why Jalen Milroe fits
Milroe is getting the Seahawks national attention for his selection.
The physically gifted but sometimes erratic QB at Alabama was only the fourth quarterback selected in this draft, with the 92nd pick. He arrives with newly signed veteran starter Sam Darnold on what is essentially a two-year contract, through at least 2026.
Milroe lasted within four picks to the end of the third round because the strong-armed, bulldozing runner had problems with accuracy, sacks and interceptions in college.
Yet he brings a dimension of running, play-making and pressuring the edges of defenses the Seahawks haven’t had since the last quarterback they took in the third round of a draft. Some guy named Russell Wilson, in 2012.
That turned out OK for Seattle.
At the combine in late February, Schneider said the reason he hadn’t drafted a quarterback but Wilson and Alex McGough as a seventh-round flier in 2018 was because the draft boards of past years hadn’t “talked to us.”
What made this year’s board scream “JALEN MILROE” Friday night?
“Give Ryan Florence (Seahawks southwest-area scout) and Aaron Hineline (director of college scouting a ton of credit. They did a ton of work on him,” Schneider said. “It’s really hard for those guys to see 22 miles per hour, or whatever it was that he ran on the field.
“He’s an incredible athlete. Incredibly fast...Hard worker.
“And he’s a William Campbell Award winner, the academic Heisman. He’s had four different offensive coordinators (in college).”
The GM lauded the upbringing Milroe had. His mother Lola worked in medical services for the U.S. Navy. His father was in the Marine Corps and was deployed to war in Iraq.
“He came on his (top-30, pre-draft prospect) visit; he had a really great visit,” Schneider said.
“He’s was just in a spot, and he just kept coming. And he was there, by himself.”
New Seahawks offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak is installing a system that requires quarterbacks to throw on the run and roll out on bootlegs. Milroe will play far more from under center with direct snaps than Milroe did in shotgun at Alabama.
How does Milroe fit what Kubiak wants to do?
“Quarterbacks that extend the play are incredibly difficult to defend,” Macdonald said. “The worst feeling in the world is you play the first play of the play perfectly on defense, you defend it. ‘All right, sweet. We did it.’ Then the guy still has the ball. You’ve got to defend the next play, sometimes a third play.”
The defense-first head coach said of Milroe: “He can kill you in the first play. He can kill you with the second play. He can kill you with the third play. It’s not a fun existence to live consistently (for a defense).
“He has that ability.”
Like Lamar Jackson?
That ability is what Macdonald saw NFL MVP Lamar Jackson had in Baltimore, when Macdonald was the Ravens’ defensive coordinator in 2022 and ‘23.
Macdonald didn’t shy away from saying, yeah, Milroe has Jackson-like traits.
“Yeah, is the short answer. Of course,” Macdonald said. “I have so much respect for that organization, obviously. Lamar obviously is a tremendous player. But you have to respect their career trajectories as independent. We respect that. We have that vision of it.
“When you add people to your organization, you want to have a vision for these people. Sometimes it’s bigger than they have for themselves. Our job is to make it come to life over time when you work together on it.
“That’s how we see Jalen.”
Macdonald was asked if he and Kubiak have a plan for Milroe that will be a patient nudge of development rather than a shove to playing right away.
“Yeah, we don’t use patience a lot around here,” Macdonald said, grinning.
“But there’s always there’s always going to be an urgency in how we’re developing our players and how we’re training them. And Jalen’s going to be right there with everybody else.”
The coach said “Sam’s gonna take, by far and away, over 90% of our snaps this year. However Jalen deserves and earns the right to go out there, then we’ll do that. You know, if it’s going to help the team, it’s best for us to move the ball and, you know, give these defenses, defensive coordinators some headaches — I’m really happy it’s not going to be us. So that that’s awesome.
“Yeah, I don’t want to put a timetable on it. It’s not an immediate need for him to go out there and be taking a bunch of snaps for us initially.”
Almost traded up for Emmanwori round 1
The 6-3, 220-pound Emmanwori was a punishing, in-the-box safety for South Carolina. He also deftly defended the pass. He had four interceptions and returned two for touchdowns last season.
He is a rarity in college football today, a three-year college player then NFL draft pick.
When he ran a 4.38 40-yard dash and had some of the best advanced-metrics testing for a safety at a combine, ever, he became a coveted player in this draft.
So coveted, Schneider said he almost traded up Thursday night back into the end of the first round. That was after Seattle had drafted Zabel at 18.
They couldn’t wait Friday to get Emmanwori. They traded up 17 spots with Tennessee and gave the Titans one of their second-round and one of their two third-round picks to get the safety with the third pick of the second round.
“Everyone was extremely passionate about it,” Schneider said. “If we would have come out of the draft without him, we would have been disappointed.”
Emmanwori said Macdonald has told him the Seahawks intend to use him like Macdonald used 6-4, 220-pound safety Kyle Hamilton with Baltimore. Macdonald helped draft Hamilton in 2022, then moved him all around his Ravens defense in the ‘22 and ‘23 seasons. Hamilton became a first-time Pro Bowl selection then first-time All-Pro the way Macdonald used him.
Macdonald was already using the name of Chancellor, Seattle’s Super Bowl-champion legend, when discussing Emmanwori Friday night.
“I think the physicality of Kam,” Macdonald said. “You have such a respect for Kam. He’s just a unicorn of a player in NFL history, and for us, the Legion of Boom. He’s so unique.
“Kyle is the same way. I think what we found with Kyle is that the system allows for us to get multiple safeties on the field and also be in the slot kind of like with enhanced coverage responsibilities. He can affect the game that way kind of at the second level while training at the third level.”
“Same story with Nick. Coming in throughout the process, getting to know us on his visit really helped out. Buying into the vision we have for him. It’s going to be really fun to work with him when he comes next week.”
That’s to rookie minicamp, on the field at team headquarters Friday through Sunday to begin May.
“I think the excitement of trading up for Nick, Elijah still being there, and Jalen still being there, I think everybody in the room (were pumped),” Schneider said of what they hope proves to be a memorable Friday in Seahawks Land.
“God helps those who can’t help themselves. Work like it’s up to you. Pray like it’s up to God. Everything will go the way it’s supposed to.”
This story was originally published April 25, 2025 at 11:04 PM.
