How Grey Zabel broke several Seahawks draft trends under John Schneider

Alexandre Castro joined Field Gulls in June 2024. Based in Brazil, he is Field Gulls' lead Seahawks analyst who's also responsible for college football coverage, draft prospect analysis, film breakdowns, and articles related to football tactics.

With their first pick of the 2025 NFL Draft, the Seattle Seahawks selected North Dakota State OL Gray Zabel with the 18th overall pick. Most recent mock drafts had Zabel as a target for the Seahawks. However, when looking at the track record of John Schneider and the team as a whole, the pick seemed unlikely.

Breaking Taboos

Here are some taboos broken by the Zabel pick. It wasn’t written in stone. The team had already gone against its tendencies a few…