‘I feel GREAT!’: Why no-trade Seahawks chose Notre Dame’s Jaradian Price round 1
They did it again. The Seahawks got what they needed most, first.
With trades galore going on right before them, the Seahawks got what they got in last year’s draft: Biggest need converged with the best player on their 2026 NFL draft board Thursday night.
Instead of trading down, per their usual, the Super Bowl champions selected Notre Dame running back Jadarian Price 32nd overall, the final pick of the first round.
The same need and best player met in the first round last year for Seattle, with 18th-overall choice Grey Zabel. That worked out OK for the Seahawks. Zabel became their new stud starter at left guard immediately. And Seattle won the Super Bowl. Price arrives one month after lead running back and Super Bowl most valuable player Kenneth Walker left Seattle. He signed a rich free-agent contact with Kansas City.
General manager John Schneider acknowledged the Seahawks’ need to replace Walker in this draft.
“Yeah, it was important,” Schneider said. “We weren’t going to, like, completely force it. But it was important, yeah.
“We just lost a really good runner in Ken Walker, you know.”
Price broke down crying among friends, family members and high-school teammates in Denison, Texas, when Schneider and the Seahawks called him Thursday night to tell him he was their first-round pick.
“I feel GREAT!” Price said via telephone from Denison, minutes after the Seahawks selected him.
He said he surprised himself at how enormous the moment his dreams came true was.
He calls the outside-zone blocking system and running game the Seahawks used as their new basis for their offense to win the Super Bowl last season his “bread and butter” scheme.
“One decisive move. And get vertical,” he said. “There’s nothing better than a smooth cutback.”
His pick is a reminder the draft isn’t just for this year, it’s for the next four. Each player selected in the seven-round NFL draft gets a four-year contract at a value slotted by the league’s collective bargaining agreement.
None of the seven running backs on the Seahawks’ 90-man offseason roster entering Thursday are signed past 2026.
Price will sign a four-year contract as Seattle’s running back of the near future. And the present, with Zach Charbonnet, a 12-touchdown rusher in 2025, coming off reconstructive knee surgery a few months ago. “Man, instant acceleration, vision, cut-back ability,” Seahawks general manager John Schneider said.
He calls Price’s ability to cut back decisively off blocks at the line his “supertalent.”
Price is only the fourth running back in 51 years of Seahawks football the team selected in the first round. The others: Curt Warner in 1983, Shaun Alexander in 2000 and Rashaad Penny in 2018.
The 5-foot-11, 203-pound Price has rebounded from rupturing his Achilles tendon in 2022. He had only 280 college snaps playing behind Love at Notre Dame for three years. Yet Price averaged more than 6 yards per carry with 18 rushing touchdowns combined in his final two seasons for the Irish. Price was also an elite kickoff returner at Notre Dame.
The finalist for the Paul Hornung Award as college football’s most versatile player returned a kickoff for a touchdown against USC. Price was leading the nation averaging 47 yards per return early last season. The fact that he stayed his entire college career at Notre Dame in this era of NIL and transfers galore also would likely make culture-first coach Mike Macdonald, a huge proponent of loyalty and intangibles, happy.
“The person,” Macdonald and Schneider both mentioned in explaining why they picked Price.
There have been questions if Price’s combine weight of 203 seven weeks ago is too light to be an NFL running back. Macdonald said that was lighter than Seattle had scouted him playing at while he was at Notre Dame.
Price said he “nerves” and draft preparation led to him losing weight entering the combine the last week of February into March. He said he iintends to be at least 210 pounds playing for the Seahawks.
Trades galore right in front of Seattle
Schneider made trades involving Seattle’s first-round choice 14 times in his first 16 drafts as the Seahawks general manager. They tried to do it again Thursday night.
“I thought we were going back, for sure,” Schneider said after he drafted Price.
Here’s why the GM didn’t trade down and out of the first round as usual this time:There were eight trades in the first round. Schneider watched six of them happen right in front of Seattle’s spot, between the 20th and 31st selections. San Francisco and Buffalo traded completely out of the first round, directly in front of the Seahawks at 30 and 31, respectively. The 49ers traded back twice right in front of their division-rival Seattle.
The conditions most presumed the Seahawks would best be able to trade back and out of round one evaporated about 90 minutes into the draft. The division-rival Los Angeles Rams, at 13 picking 19 spots ahead of Seattle’s place, selected Alabama quarterback Ty Simpson. The second quarterback taken in this draft, after Fernando Mendoza went first overall to the Raiders Thursday, Simpson will be the eventual heir to 38-year-old Matthew Stafford as coach Sean McVay’s quarterback in L.A.
That pick was far higher than most of the league expected Simpson to go. Many felt he would be on the board at 32, and that a quarterback-needy team such as Arizona (which released seven-year starting QB Kyler Murray last month) would be enticed to trade up with the Seahawks to 32 to get the final pick of the first round and the fifth-year contract option on the quarterback.
Simpson going that early made Schneider’s task to find trading partners with whom to move down more extensive. The New York Jets had the 33th pick in the draft immediately behind Seattle, the first pick of Friday’s second round. The Jets traded up ahead of the Seahawks to 30th overall Thursday night, obtaining San Francisco’s first-round pick.
That and only one top cornerback going among the first two dozen selections Thursday conspired for the GM and Seattle to keep their pick at 32. The Seahawks may have been able to draft Price even after trading back into the top of round two. But after all the trades right in front of them, there were no trading partners left to deal with in round one.
So the 32nd pick became the Price the Seahawks were willing to pay for their newest lead running back.
This story was originally published April 23, 2026 at 8:14 PM.
