Jadarian Price’s first real crack at the NFL may have arrived faster than anyone expected.
The former Notre Dame running back, taken with the final pick in the first round of the 2025 NFL Draft, entered Seattle with the kind of profile that usually suggests a patient rollout. Instead, the Seahawks have handed him a path that could put him in the middle of the action right away.
Training camp is getting underway across the league, and Seattle asked its rookies to report on Friday. Once Price showed up, he immediately became one of the most interesting names in camp. The reason is simple: the Seahawks’ backfield has opened up in a big way.
Seattle traded last year’s starting running back, Kenneth Walker, to the Kansas City Chiefs. Then Zach Charbonnet, who was the team’s second-leading rusher, suffered a torn ACL in the divisional round of the playoffs. That combination leaves Price with a real chance to climb quickly on the depth chart, whether the Seahawks planned it that way from the start or not.
Head coach Mike Macdonald made it clear the rookie is expected to fit into plenty of different roles.
“We’re going to run wide zone, and he’s going to run wide zone,” Seattle head coach Mike Macdonald said, via Seahawks.com. “We’re going to run some gap scheme.
He’s going to run some of that too and then the pass game he can come alive, too. I think that’s part of our offense in general, that we can take another step in including our halfbacks in the pass game.”
Macdonald also pointed to another avenue for Price to get on the field, even if the carries don’t all fall his way.
“Then,” Macdonald added. “He’s a great special teams player as well. The kick return stuff, we’ll see how it shakes out in other phases, but he’s going to come in and compete with the rest of the guys.”
That part matters because NFL teams usually don’t hand kick return duties to a potential starting running back. But Price was drafted with the idea that he can impact a game in multiple ways, and Seattle clearly wants to use that versatility.
At Notre Dame, he was a dangerous return man, bringing back 22 kickoffs for 794 yards, a 36.1-yard average, and three touchdowns. He also produced plenty on offense, rushing for more than 1,300 yards and 18 touchdowns over his last two seasons while averaging better than 6 yards per carry. Sharing time with Jeremiyah Love trimmed some of those totals, but it didn’t hide what Price could do with the ball.
He added 10 catches for 100 yards and two more touchdowns as a receiver. In 2025, he also returned 12 kicks for 450 yards and two touchdowns.
Seattle is betting that the same kind of all-purpose production can carry over to the Seahawks. If it does, Price won’t just be part of the rookie conversation. He’ll be right in the middle of it.
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Freeman also used the spotlight to talk about the broader shape of the program, from recruiting momentum to the challenge of keeping the standard high once the season starts. Carr, meanwhile, kept the focus on team goals even as his own profile rises, and the two of them made sure to point out the kind of games that can define a season before October arrives. For a coach whose name keeps surfacing in NFL conversations, the week was as much about reinforcing Notre Dames direction as it was about selling it. [Read more 🡒]