They need to add them from last season’s porous unit.
They haven’t signed any top ones in free agency.
So, yes, the Seahawks are focusing a lot of their draft preparation and planning on offensive linemen — the guys they desperately need.
“Definitely, we need to (address it). Everybody sees it,” general manager John Schneider said in a hallway of team headquarters last month.
“I get it with the offensive line, the offensive-line stuff. Talking about the fans, I mean, I get that.
“I have empathy for that, big time.”
So does he have a plan for drafting ones that can help Seattle’s remade offense, immediately?
If top-30 pre-draft visits that end Wednesday are an indication, yes.
Each NFL team is allowed up to 30 visits with college players who have declared they are entering this year’s draft. The “top-30” visit period across the league is March 4 through April 16.
The Seahawks are known through leaks and reports to have invited at least 13 prospects to team headquarters in Renton for testing, timing, physical examinations and interviews.
Five of those 13 top-30 visits have been offensive linemen. That does not include a sixth for the offense on the line of scrimmage: Mason Taylor, the 6-foot-5, 251-pound tight end from LSU. He’s the son of Pro Football Hall of Famer Jason Taylor.
The offensive linemen Seattle is known to have hosted or will be hosting in the next week are: Georgia guard Dylan Fairchild, Georgia center Jared Wilson, Washington State left tackle Esa Pole, Connecticut tackle Chase Lundt and Kansas tackle Bryce Cabledue.
Many scouts see Lundt and Cabledue as NFL guards. That makes four of the five offensive linemen the Seahawks have on their top-30 visits interior offensive linemen.
It is their biggest need.
Seattle let starting left guard Laken Tomlinson leave after one, ineffective season in 2024. The Seahawks went through three right guards last season, before 2024 rookie Sataoa Laumea finished the year there. And they aren’t set at center. The reason Olu Oluwatimi finished last season as the starter there was because Connor Williams abruptly retired at age 27 in the middle of last season, two months after Seattle signed him off knee reconstruction surgery.
The only offensive lineman the Seahawks have signed in free agency this offseason is veteran NFL backup Josh Jones. He got a characteristic, one-year contract. Jones knows the outside-zone blocking scheme of Seattle’s new offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak, from their time together on the 2023 Houston Texans.
In his 15 years as Seattle’s GM, Schneider has not drafted an interior offensive lineman in the first or second round.
The closest was in 2017. He selected LSU’s Ethan Pocic in round two. The Seahawks officially listed Pocic as a tackle when they drafted him. He also played guard and center in college. Pocic began his rookie preseason at tackle, then in the regular season was a left and right guard for Seattle. By the opening game of the 2019 season he was the Seahawks’ center.
It’s not as if Schneider hasn’t drafted offensive linemen. He’s drafted a lot of them, 27 O-linemen in 15 drafts for Seattle. The GM noted last month that’s the third-most offensive linemen drafted by a team in the league since 2010. Over his first 18 drafts, the 16 offensive linemen he drafted from 2010 through May 2017 were the NFL’s most in that span.
“So, yes, we have missed on some guys, no question,” Schneider told KIRO-AM radio last month.
“There’s also a level of we haven’t developed guys, either. They’ve gone on and played pretty well in other places.”
He mentioned former Seahawks guard James Carpenter (a college tackle, first round, 2011) and former starting tackle Germain Ifedi (first round, 2016). Pocic, now the center for the Cleveland Browns, is another.
It’s that the Seahawks have to evaluate and assess better, their GM says.
This year, Schneider and coach Mike Macdonald believe they have the right line coaches with a clear system to fit players and roles.
Senior advisor Rick Dennison, a veteran Super Bowl-champion line coach and offensive coordinator with the 1990s Denver Broncos, and new 20-year NFL veteran line coach John Bolton are steeped in the outside-zone blocking system. Dennison and Bolton are getting big sway in the Seahawks’ draft plans this spring.
That’s a new approach with new evaluators Seattle needs to change the results on the O-line.
Seahawks at the combine, Senior Bowl
This year’s Seahawks had formal interviews with four other offensive linemen at the NFL scouting combine in Indianapolis last month, plus at pro days on college campuses across the country since the combine.
At the combine, the Seahawks were one of 12 teams to meet formally with highly coveted Ohio State guard Donovan Jackson, Georgia guard Tate Ratledge and William & Mary offensive tackle Charles Grant (who may also become an NFL guard).
Seattle scouts sat down with Texas State guard Nash Jones at that school’s pro day.
Schneider and Macdonald were at the Senior Bowl in Mobile, Alabama, in late January. There, Seattle was the only NFL team to talk twice in interviews with Sacramento State guard Jackson Slater. He’s from Newport High School, just up I-405 from Seahawks headquarters.
Another college guard who was a standout at center at the Senior Bowl was Grey Zabel from North Dakota State. The Seahawks have been linked to him this spring, as well.
Seattle’s scouts have known Zabel for years. They saw him in 2023 if not before while they were scouting Jalen Sundell, the Seahawks’ undrafted rookie in 2024 from NDSU. Sundell appears set to challenge Oluwatimi to perhaps be Seattle’s center in 2025.
In all, the Seahawks have been linked to 25 prospects among top-30 visits, the combine, pro days and the Senior Bowl.
Ten of those 25 are offensive linemen. That includes Georgia’s Wilson, twice. Seattle also interviewed the center from Georgia at the combine.
And there could be more.
After the top-30 visits end April 16, all NFL teams have another week to interview prospects by telephone virtually, usually via Zoom. The final day for those talks is April 23.
Plus, the Seahawks had their annual pro day for local prospects at team headquarters Thursday. Schneider said on his weekly radio show with KIRO AM it was the largest turnout of local prospects he’s had in his 15 years doing it.
He confirmed Ohio State tight end Gee Scott Jr. from Eastside Catholic High School was one of the prospects that participated. Scott wasn’t invited to the NFL combine. He’s projected by many to be a late-round pick this month.
What top-30 visits mean
Top-30 visits aren’t sure-fire tells on whom a team is about to draft. But the visits do give some indication.
In recent years, in rough estimation, about one in five eventual Seahawks draft choices came to Seattle on top-30 visits.
The Seahawks and other NFL teams use top-30 visits for a variety of purposes, some of which take prospects off a team’s draft board rather than move them up.
The added information from the visits also goes into the second draft board the Seahawks have: The one that forecasts what each of the league’s other 31 teams are going to do at each spot in each round.
Manytop-30 visits and other pre-draft interviews are meant to answer questions the Seahawks’ scouting, medical and personnel staffs still have on a player.
For instance, Wilson, expected to be a second-day pick, missed two games for Georgia last season with an injured foot. Ratledge, projected by many to be a second-round choice, missed four games for Georgia in 2024 and needed ankle surgery. Nash missed half of Texas State’s 2023 season with a lower-leg injury.
Schneider says the issues that will cause him and the Seahawks to drop guys down from the rounds and spots where they have them assessed include new injury or medical information they just learned on a prospect, any off-the-field issue Seahawks decision-makers don’t know fully about, or something that comes up on the Zoom calls with prospects “that there’s just something that might be a little bit off, that we’re not comfortable with.”
It’s those feelings and impressions Schneider and his staff are evaluating now.
The 40-yard dashes, the three-cone times, the measurements guys had at the combine — Seahawks scouts have long since settled their assessments on those. Teams can get how fast players run in specific college game situations, and in exact sections of the field, through GPS tracking software that’s on top of today’s scouting film.
“Really, you know, the 40 times and all that kind of stuff, there’s been so much more information now with all the GPS (player) tracking, it’s really more of a tell on preparation,” Schneider said, “and how important it is to the skill-(position) players than it is than just flat-out time.”
What’s left for Seahawks before drafting
The Seahawks have 10 choices in this draft. That includes the 18th-overall pick in round one, and five of the first 92 selections.
The added picks later in rounds two and three April 25 are from Seattle trading quarterback Geno Smith to the Raiders and wide receiver DK Metcalf to the Steelers last month.
Schneider has as his top deputy assistant general manager Nolan Teasley. Teasley is a 12-year veteran of Schneider’s draft process. He was Seattle’s director of pro personnel from 2018-22. He was a scouting executive and a Seahawks scout before that.
Schneider, Teasley and the Seahawks personnel side will have gone over their draft board six times before the first round begins April 24.
Over the weeks leading into the league owners’ meetings in Florida that ended early last week, Schneider and his personnel guys formed their board for rounds four through seven. Last weekend, they finished rounds one through three.
“This is basically our third swipe through it,” Schneider told KIRO AM last week.
The fourth go-through of their draft board has been this week. That has been with Seahawks scouts. They have returned from attending the last of the major-college pro days on campuses.
One of the final ones was April 4 at the University of Colorado. That’s where Travis Hunter and Shadeur Sanders, expected top picks in this draft, played.
After Seahawks scouts’ input, Macdonald, his coordinators, position coaches and assistants will review their draft board. That will be the fifth go-round.
The sixth will be a final one, when Schneider and Macdonald vet it before the week of the draft.
The GM never wants to change too much on his board the closer it gets to the draft.
“You have to be careful over-evaluating, especially at this time of the year,” Schneider said.
“We have so much information now.”
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