Last month, the Seattle Seahawks made all the right picks in the 2025 NFL Draft. There were no picks that made you say, "huh?" There were no big-time reaches or obscure players you've never heard of. Ultimately, Seattle's draft class ended up with overwhelmingly positive reviews, as it should.
Seattle added one of the best interior offensive linemen in the draft in Grey Zabel via their first-round pick, addressing the most enormous hole on the roster. They traded up and took the most athletic ball-hawking safety in the history of the NFL draft in Nick Emmanwori in the second round.
Seattle added one of the better tight ends in Elijah Arroyo and landed a third-round lottery ticket in quarterback Jalen Milroe.
It was about as perfect a draft as you can request from Seattle and general manager John Schneider. However, as we know, nothing is ever truly perfect. Amid the players' excitement, the Seahawks added, there's still one little cause for concern that I've noticed in the class.
One common thread runs through the collective Seahawks 2025 draft class
What is an NFL player's best ability? Availability. It's corny, it's cliché, and it's cringey, but it's also true. If one team knows about this, it's the Seahawks. Seattle always seems to draft players who deal with constant, nagging injuries. It's almost inevitable.
Despite how exciting and talented this 2025 class is, they still have one common thread: an injury history. Starting with tight end Elijah Arroyo, who figures to be TE Noah Fant's successor for the Seahawks offense, in 2022, Arroyo suffered a torn ACL, which prematurely ended his sophomore season in Miami.
Only a year later, in 2023, Arroyo played only four games due to lingering knee injuries. In 2024, his most recent season in Miami, he was able to finish the whole season but suffered a knee injury at the Senior Bowl.
The same applies to defensive tackle Rylie Mills out of Notre Dame. As a pure football player, he was likely a top-50 prospect in the entire draft. However, much like Arroyo, Mills slid due to injury concerns. Late in the 2024 season, during the College Football Playoff, Mills suffered a torn ACL, which shut him down for the rest of the tournament.
He appears to be ahead of schedule in his recovery, but injury history is injury history—and that has killed Seattle in recent years.
Even wide receiver Tory Horton, a fantastic prospect out of Colorado State, has a concerning injury history. Horton missed most of the 2024 college football season with a mysterious, unspecified knee injury.
The good news is Horton appears to be on track for a full recovery after running a 4.41-second 40-yard dash at the combine. However, for a wide receiver, an unspecified knee injury that kept him out of most of last season raises concerns.
Running back Damien Martinez, Arroyo's teammate at Miami, also suffered what appeared to be a significant arm injury in the Hurricanes' bowl game late in 2024. Late in the Pop-Tarts Bowl, Martinez injured his arm and didn't return. Even WR Ricky White III out of UNLV dealt with nagging injuries that legitimately affected his performance down the stretch.
While injuries don't diminish this fantastic draft class, it should still linger in the back of the mind. Seattle has a history of drafting chronically injured players, which hardly works out. However, with professional doctors and an NFL training staff, there's cause for optimism that these rookies will heal up and ultimately become key contributors in Seattle for years to come.