Cody White ousts Marquez Valdes-Scantling in Macdonald’s Seahawks meritocracy
Cody White’s parents traveled multi-mode to see their guy earn his way onto the Seahawks.
They drove by car two hours across their native Michigan, from Novi in the western suburbs of Detroit. Then they took a ferry across Lake Michigan, to Wisconsin. Back on land they drove another hour or so west through Dairyland, to Green Bay.
That’s how they got to Lambeau Field Saturday to see their son’s series of standout plays against the Packers in Seattle’s final preseason game. They were among the swarm of players’ family members outside the locker room and stadium, next to the team bus.
They were wondering, hoping...
Is this it?
Is this the first time in their son’s six years grinding through NFL training camps the hardest way, as an undrafted free agent, that Cody White is going to make a 53-man roster to begin a regular season?
“I really try to keep that on the external,” White told The News Tribune, standing next to his family outside the locker room at Lambeau Field Saturday. “I really just focus on everything that I can control.
“So I went out there. Every time I got opportunity, I made a play. Every day I come in, one of the first people in the building, always the last one to leave. Make sure that I know the playbook. Make sure that I’m on all my details. Catching the football, doing all the big things, making exclusive plays like I did today.”
He shrugged.
“And,” he said, “that’s all you can ask for.”
Well, almost all.
He got it all on Tuesday. Seahawks coach Mike Macdonald, offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak, wide receivers coach Frisman Jackson, special-teams coach Jay Harbaugh and general manager John Schneider all decided the 26-year-old White earned his way onto his first initial NFL regular-season roster.
His journey from rookie free agent out of Michigan State: Cut by Kansas City. Cut by the New York Giants. Cut by the Denver Broncos. Signed and cut seven different times by the team his own dad worked for, the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Then, in the summer of 2023, he signed with the Seahawks. In two years, Seattle has signed, released and re-signed White to the practice squad 10 times.
That’s 17 signings, releases and signings again, in six years.
You get why he really tries to keep that yo-yoing on the external.
Tuesday, he warmed up for practice next to Jaxon Smith-Njigba, rookie training-camp star Tory Horton and the 50 other Seahawks who had made it.
He smiled.
After the workout ended, White walked to the edge of the practice field. He smiled again. He sighed.
“Thank you,” is all he said.
Then he went back onto the field. He spent 20 more minutes catching passes out of JUGS machine. He and Seahawks quarterbacks Sam Darnold, Drew Lock and Jalen Milroe were the only players left on the field.
Later Tuesday evening, when he had a chance to put finally reaching his goal in perspective, White went online to his Instagram account, @codywhite_15. He wrote:
“I’ve been cut 8 times, been on 5 different teams. I’ve been in the league for 6 years, I’ve never made the 53 man roster after training camp until today!! All praise to the man above, perseverance and hard work. Just know there will be tough moments, tough days, tough years, just keep going and never quit!...
“I can finally call my momma and tell her I MADE IT!!
“#runyourrace”
Macdonald made a strong inference Saturday following the preseason finale in Green Bay White had earned his spot on the team.
“Give him the opportunity, and he makes plays,” Macdonald said last weekend. “I’m happy for him. We’ve talked about it for two years now. The guy worked extremely hard. He earned that (big game in Green Bay). That was really cool.”
Mike Macdonald Seahawks meritocracy
White made the team over 30-year-old wide receiver Marquez Valdes-Scantling, even though Schneider and Seattle guaranteed Valdes-Scantling, the Packers’ former top deep threat for Aaron Rodgers, $3 million and White’s guaranteed nothing.
In training-camp practices, in preseason games, White was simply better.
Valdes-Scantling, a vested veteran, was not subject to league waivers. He reportedly agreed Wednesday to sign with the 49ers, Seattle’s week-one foe. So he will be in Lumen Field for the opener, after all, only playing against the Seahawks instead of for them.
Three undrafted rookies also made the Seahawks’ initial 53-man roster: linebacker Jared Ivey and Connor O’Toole plus tight end Nick Kellerup. Seattle was one of only eight teams in the 32-team league to keep three or more undrafted rookie free agents.
White and his younger undrafted brothers represent the meritocracy Macdonald has established in his second year leading the Seahawks. It’s not about how much money you make. It’s not about what you’ve done or who you’ve done it with.
It’s about production when you are in the training rooms, the film room, on the practice field and in games. As his head coach said, each time Cody White gets a chance — training camp practices, games, real games such as last Nov. 3 at Lumen Field against the Rams when he had two catches for 44 yards on his only three targets of last season, plus blocked a punt — the 6-foot-3, 227-pound wide receiver produces.
Playing for his career — yet again — White had three catches for 52 yards, all in the second half, at Green Bay last weekend. He didn’t play at all in the first half. Then with fellow wide receiver Jake Bobo concussed earlier in the game, coaches put White back to return a Green Bay punt in the fourth quarter.
He took the ball at the Seattle 8-yard line and sprinted up the right sideline past some Packers for a 35-yard return to the Seahawks 43. That was the best starting field position for a Seahawks drive in the game up to that point. Down 20-0 at the time, it was the highlight of the game for the Seahawks to that point.
Then he gave them more.
On the next snap White did what coaches want to see from their wide receivers. Milroe scrambled to his right away from pressure that he got from the Packers all day. White was down the field on his initial pattern deep when he saw his quarterback in some trouble. White came back toward the QB and stopped in open space along the right sideline. He gave Milroe a big, clear spot in front of him. The rookie quarterback hit it for a 25-yard gain into Green Bay territory.
“That’s a big thing for me, just making sure that I’m always moving for the quarterback,” White said. “So if he’s on time, I’m moving if he’s off schedule, I’m moving and squirming. I’m moving. So, just making sure that I’m always open for the quarterback.
“That’s all you can do, making sure that the quarterback feels comfortable throwing you the football.”
But he can do more.
From the Packers 18-yard line, Milroe ran to his left. White ran into the open space in zone coverage at Green Bay’s 10. He caught Milroe’s pass and ran it into the end zone for Seattle’s first score with 12 minutes left.
On the sideline, Macdonald, an avid golfer, joked with White.
“In golf when you play a scramble and you get your own eagle? That’s what you had on that drive,” the coach told White.
It was the first touchdown of White’s six, nomadic years in the league. Last summer he had a 73-yard touchdown catch and run on a go route down the sideline on a pass from Sam Howell in Seattle’s final preseason game of 2024. But that got called back by a Seahawks penalty.
It was also Milroe’s first NFL touchdown pass.
Who got the ball?
“I don’t know where the ball went,” White said outside Lambeau Saturday.
He laughed.
Dad didn’t have to cut him
White and the others near the end of the Seahawks’ newly set roster won’t feel comfortable. This is an initial regular-season roster. The team will claim players off waivers, sign players to needy positions such as defensive tackle, and change the initial roster multiple times in coming weeks.
Yet...whatever. This summer is going so well for White, it’s like 2023’s never happened.
Then, White was coming off his first career receptions in his two seasons of NFL regular-season games, 15 mostly on special teams in 2021 and one game in 2022 for Pittsburgh. He was playing there when his father Sheldon White, a former NFL defensive back, was the Steelers’ director of pro scouting.
But it wasn’t nepotism that got White his chance with the Steelers. Cody signed with Pittsburgh in 2020. Sheldon White was one of GM Omar Khan’s first hires when Khan joined the Steelers in the spring of 2022.
In his role, Sheldon White usually had the tough task of telling Steelers they’d been cut in training camp.
At the end of training camp in August 2023, Dad’s Steelers cut his son.
“He normally does the cutting,” Cody White told the TNT on KJR-FM radio in 2024. “But (the) GM wouldn’t allow him. So Omar was the one who ended up cutting me.
“He wouldn’t let my dad be the one who cut me out of Pittsburgh.”
Now all of the White family are celebrating a keeping, not dealing with yet another NFL release.
And they won’t be taking a car ferry to the next game White plays in. That’s on track to be in Seattle Sept. 7, in the season opener against San Francisco at Lumen Field.
Few Seahawks will appreciate that day, or this day, more than White.
“It’s a blessing to even be in the NFL and be at this level that I’m at and be able to make plays like I did (in Green Bay),” he said.
“So every day that I step into an NFL building it’s a blessing. That’s how I look at it.”
This story was originally published August 27, 2025 at 12:08 PM.
