True to his on-the-farm nature, Grey Zabel was rising early, grinding hard and kicking butt.
The versatile tackle/guard/center at North Dakota State was dominating defensive linemen and linebackers in the lower Football Championship Subdivision. For years.
In this era of unlimited transfers in college football, that gets you noticed by giant, Power Five schools in the Football Bowl Subdivision. And that gets you money. Lots of it, in the form of essentially unregulated, cash payments for Name, Image and Likeness.
“They were up there,” Zabel said Thursday of the offers from the big boys.
Six-figures-per-year up there?
“Oh, yeah,” he said.
For a farm boy from Pierre, South Dakota — he says the best ways to describe himself is “family, football and farming” — that’s crazy cash.
“There were some offers that kind of made me scratch my head,” he said.
He was speaking on the telephone from the draft party his family threw for his friends and coaches in the basement of the Zabel family home in Pierre Thursday night.
Instead of starring in perhaps the Big Ten or the SEC, the golden pathways into the NFL, amid college players by the thousands leaving their programs each year, Zabel stayed in Fargo, North Dakota.
He stayed loyal to those who’d been loyal to him. Loyal to those Bison coaches who’d recruited him as a supposedly low- or no-star prospect out of T.F. Riggs High School in Pierre.
“Absolutely. I’m a firm believer with North Dakota State can take you anywhere you want to go,” he said. “I’m true to that word. I think it’s really powerful.
“In this day and age with guys kind of transferring out or getting bought by NIL, it shows something that if you stay true to who you are and who believes in you and who poured into you, you’re going to reap the benefits.”
Still, a quarter million dollars or more for a 21-, 22-year-old college kid? That’s not exactly easy to turn away from.
Even his college coach thought Zabel was nuts not to bolt for the major programs and their NIL cash.
“My head coach (Tim Polasek) always calls me stupid for not taking the money,” Zabel said.
“But at the end of the day, I think it paid off pretty well.”
Guess so. The Seahawks will give Zabel a four-year contract worth $16.6 million. He will earn $3.03 million in base pay this rookie year.
All this is one reason Seattle general manager John Schneider and coach Mike Macdonald made Zabel the Seahawks’ first Round-1 pick from a lower college division since 1999. That year Seattle drafted Saginaw Valley State defensive end Lamar King, at 22nd overall.
“He’s just a loyal dude,” Schneider said of Zabel late Thursday night, after the first round ended. “I mean, he’s really close to this family. That’s a good, just good person.
“Just, he’s confident, loyal.
“Tough dude.”
That toughness is what first attracted Schneider, Macdonald, senior college scouting coordinator Kirk Parrish and the Seahawks to Zabel.
They’d seen the 6-foot-6, 316-pound Zabel play the majority of his snaps at NDSU at tackle, on both left and right sides. Then at the Senior Bowl in Mobile, Alabama, in late January Macdonald and Schneider were on the field watching Zabel practicing at guard and center.
Defensive linemen from the Power Five schools were lining up, fighting over each other to go against Zabel. The hot-shots figured they could impress NFL coaches, GMs and scouts by running over the smaller-school guy.
Instead, they got run over. Zabel mauled them.
And he kept mauling them.
“Just seeing him compete against all the guys that were down there…he was stealing reps (jumping in front of other offensive linemen in drills),” Schneider said.
The GM who began in the NFL as a scout for his native Green Bay Packers in 1993 said he’d never seen that at the Senior Bowl.
Macdonald was wowed by Zabel finishing blocks into the defensive secondary at the Senior Bowl practices. The defense-first head coach said he didn’t see Zabel lose a pass-rush rep in Mobile.
“It’s, this guy’s a great pass protector. He can hit his targets on the move. He’s really athletic. He’s tough,” Macdonald said.
“He finished his blocks, which is one of my favorite things about him.”
Zabel was named the offensive practice player of the week at the Senior Bowl. The defensive player of the week, defensive end Mike Green from Marshall, ran over some other offensive tackles one day at the Senior Bowl. Then Green left Mobile, in the middle of the practice week. Green believed he didn’t have anything else to prove, that he’d impressed the NFL folks enough.
Thursday, Zabel became the 18th pick in the draft.
Zabel was asked Thursday night what his favorite play call is.
“A-gap power,” he said of a man-on-man dive play between the guard and center.
“It’s a mentality play. It’s a program or an organizational play. An understanding that everyone in the entire stadium knows that you’re going to try and run in between the guards. And having the kind of mentality that you need to move the dude from point A to point B is huge.
“We have a saying that we do a lot of RPOs up at North Dakota State. And that means ‘Run Power, Often.’ Not the normal RPO that everyone out there, the football gurus, talk about (Run-Pass Option).
“Definitely, A-gap power, for sure.”
Schneider and Macdonald love that. The Seahawks’ entire offensive line needs about four more guys of that.
Coach Mike Macdonald says about 1st-round pick Grey Zabel “we’ll see how it shakes out what side he will start.
“He’s a little throwback, you know, he gets rocking the ‘stache,” Schneider said of Zabel.
“All the interviews, he just exudes this really cool confidence, toughness. Like I said, (he’s) a smart, tough, reliable guy.
“I mean, I’m biased being from Wisconsin. So farms, tough guys. I like those guys, you know.”
What was immediately next for the newest Seahawk Thursday night, in the Zabels’ basement in Pierre?
“I’m probably going to start diving into these Busch Lights,” he said.
Yes, that’s an offensive lineman the Seahawks need.
They’ve been too craft beer in the trenches for too long.
“We have the 12-hour rule. We get to celebrate it for 12 hours and then we get back to work,” Zabel said.
“I’ve got an unbelievable crew here, my head coach, my offensive line coach. They’re all down here (in this basement), and a lot of friends and family.
“High alert for Pierre, South Dakota. We’re going to have some fun, and we’re going to enjoy this tonight.”
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