If his game tape is a college football prospect’s resume, a Top-30 visit is his job interview. The top-30s are not the only way a potential draft pick may meet face-to-face with an NFL general manager, like the Seattle Seahawks' John Schneider.
In fact, the name – “Top-30” – may imply more value than it actually has. GMs and other front office personnel might have formal or informal discussions with a prospect at various points throughout the run-up to the draft. They are not all Top-30s.
Top-30s are formal interviews in which a non-local prospect is brought to a team’s facility to meet coaches, scouts, and medical personnel. Seahawk decision makers Schneider and head coach Mike Macdonald may talk to a lot of other players at the scouting combine, individual Pro Days, and all-star games.
What can we learn from the Seattle Seahawks’ Top-30 interviews this year?
Top-30 visits do take on an added mantle of significance for a couple of reasons. A team does have to go out of its way and incur some expense to plan the visit. It is an intentional expression of interest. Just as important to the outside world, Top-30s are easier to track.
Since they are formal visits, we know about them with more accuracy than we know about all those informal meetings that may have happened at the Senior Bowl. As a result, we may assign them greater significance, whether it is merited or not.
According to CBSSports.com, Seattle has conducted eight Top-30 interviews as of March 26. Here are the most interesting takeaways from the group of players they have brought in.
Another Nick Emmanwori?
Jalon Kilgore doesn’t exactly profile to be the next Nick Emmanwori, but like the Seahawks phenom, Kilgore is a versatile defensive back product from the South Carolina Gamecock program.
In fact, Kilgore began his college career when he stepped in for an injured Emmanwori in the first game of his freshman season. He has excellent size for a cornerback – 6’1”, 210 pounds – and brings a legit 4.4 time to the party. And like Emmanwori and can play anywhere on the field.
Targeting defensive backs?
Kilgore is just one of the defensive backs Seattle is bringing in for meetings. So far, five of its eight Top-30 visits have been with defensive backs. Like Kilgore, most played on the perimeter in college, but also have the physicality and versatility to move around. Kilgore may be the biggest, but there are no smaller slot corners on Seattle's list right now.
They are all at least 6’0” tall, all weigh in the 190-200 pound range. They tend to have longer arms. The top-rated prospects have blazing speed – like Georgia’s Daylen Everette, or across-the-board athleticism, like San Diego State’s Chris Johnson. They all have proven experience in zone schemes.
They also represent prospects from every part of the draft process, from a projected first-rounder like Johnson to a projected seventh-rounder/UDFA like Toledo’s Andre Fuller.
A run on Rockets?
Speaking of Fuller, he is one of two Toledo Rocket players on the Seahawks’ Top-30 list. Perhaps two does not constitute a “run,” but so far, it is the only school to have multiple Seattle Top-30 players. The other is running back Chip Trayanum, who bounced from Arizona State to Ohio State to Kentucky before landing in Toledo for his final season.
Trayanum is a running back, but like so many Seahawks players, he is really an athlete first and foremost. He was a great linebacker in high school and put in some time there in college as well.
Current Penn State coach Matt Campbell turned the Toledo program around in the early 2010s before handing it over to Jason Candle. Candle has maintained the standard, going 81-45 since 2015. One of the first players he sent to the NFL was another pretty good running back – Kareem Hunt.
A running back in round six?
I’m not even convinced that Seattle is looking at Trayanum as a running back, but he is one of two college RBs on the Top-30 list who project as a late round pick or UDFA. The other is Kennesaw State’s Coleman Bennett. Bennett is a fascinating choice for a visit.
To the best of my knowledge, no other team has devoted a Top-30 to him. Kennesaw State is less than 100 miles from the University of Georgia, but it isn’t exactly a football juggernaut. The program has only been around for about a decade, and they struggled when they moved from the FCS to the FBS division in 2024.
But they roared back last season, and Bennett was a big part of it. He doesn’t have the raw speed of a Kenneth Walker, but he has Walker-like ability to bounce runs outside for big gains.
John Schneider going his own way
It would be insane to doubt John Schneider’s scouting pedigree at this point. So when I tell you that three of his eight Top-30 invites have not received invitations from any other NFL squad, don’t worry. It is common for a team to focus on an undiscovered gem, but 38% of your targets? That might worry me if it were another GM. With Schneider, I trust he knows what he’s doing.