Seattle Seahawks 2025 Draft Pick Deep Dive: Grey Zabel Part One – The Numbers

Seattle Seahawks 2025 Draft Pick Deep Dive: Grey Zabel Part One – The Numbers

What is going on everybody? Good morning. Happy Wednesday. Hope you guys are doing well. Bleacher Report stream later tonight. Going live right around 6. Might go a little bit early today. We’ll see. But uh check out the Bleacher Report show. Check out the link I’m going to be posting later. But uh that’s for later tonight. For right now, we’re going to be starting another little series on this channel. It’s a series I’ve done the last couple of years. I don’t see any reason why I should stop doing it. Now, we are going to be doing our rookie class deep dive. My plan is to take a look at every Seahawks rookie draft pick and a couple of the UDFAs as well and do a deep dive into them, talking about them as much as I can, talking about them through a few different lenses from a few different angles and basically just try to get myself and my viewers as much information as possible about these guys before the season starts. Should take about two weeks to get through all of it. I don’t think these will be the only videos I make over the the next couple of weeks, though. We have a schedule release in about a week. That will obviously be covered on the channel. Um, there may be a couple other things that happen over the next couple of weeks, so it may not be every day, but most days for the next few weeks, there’s going to be a rookie deep dive. We’re going to go in order from picked first to picked last. So, we’re going to start with Grace Ael because he was our first pick. And basically I just want to try to understand these guys as much as possible and I want to offer up whatever insights that I can in video form. So the plan is there are going to be three videos today all on Garezable. This first one is going to be grazable by the numbers. Just taking a look at the raw numbers, the basic facts, and then we expand into other stuff with the video later today or the two videos later today. So, I’m going to try to offer up as much interesting information as I possibly can, and then we will go into our remaining rookie class, our second round picks, our third round pick, on and on until we get through everybody that I think is compelling. Real quick though, before we start this Gray Zable discussion, I hope that you like this video. If you do, please click the thumbs up button. Helps the channel out. Subscribe if you’re new and you want daily Seahawks content. Even over this off season, even during the slow months of the offseason, I’ll be trying to upload at least once a day. Once we get into the season, once we get into the preseason, it’ll be going up to like four or five, not maybe even six times a day. So, definitely if that’s something that you’re into, hit the sub button. You can become a channel member for $2 a month. Those are the best ways to help support the channel. All right, let’s go ahead and start the conversation on Gray Zable, left guard. Uh, for now, I’m not entirely convinced that he’s going to be our left guard long term. I’m not entirely convinced he’s going to be the left guard even when the season starts. But for the moment, the team is trying to sell him as a left guard, and I think he has a reasonable chance of doing it. So, I don’t think there’s any harm in acknowledging the way the team is trying to at least sell him. And I certainly hope it works out that way because I think that would be a much more valuable use of a good player. So for the moment we’ll list him as a left guard. Just keep in mind it may not stay that way. North Dakota State, a program that has produced some really good offensive linemen in the last few years. Some really good prospect prospects like Cody Mosque, Dylan Rnuns. Uh there have been a few other less high-profile guys that have nevertheless been notable in this league. uh 23 years old when the season starts, by which I mean in September when NFL games start. So he’s not young, but he’s not old. He’s relatively average as far as NFL rookies go, 23. So, the first thing that really stands out about Zable, and by the way, one thing I want to say is these percentiles, excuse me, are compared to guards, specifically guards. So that’s always a little bit touchy because quite frequently you have players that go to the combine as tackles and then they end up playing guard or they go as guard and end up playing center. In very rare instances they go as a guard and end up playing tackle. I wouldn’t really expect that to almost ever happen, but I’m sure it’s happened at least a couple times. So keep in mind that he’s being compared to players that were considered to be guards when they went to the combine, not what they actually ended up being. So it’s a little bit tricky. And if we were to try to apply the other barometer where we actually evaluate him against players that ended up playing guard, I’m sure the numbers would be radically different. Nevertheless, 6’5 and 7 7/8 in. So just a hair shy of 6’6, which when compared to other guards is very tall. Most guards are not that tall. 97th percentile for Grayable in terms of height. And that’s not necessarily a great thing. Height means struggling to win leverage. So something to keep in mind. I’ll talk more about that later, but 97th percentile for height. For weight, he’s right near the middle at 312 lbs, which is 47th percentile when compared to other guard prospects specifically. And remember that includes right guards. So the right guards tend to be heavier than the left guards. So, if you were to just compare him to guys that were being looked at as left guards, which again would be even more difficult because some guys play both sides. It’s not entirely clear where some guys actually end up um landing at the time of the combine. Um it would actually be a little bit on the heavier side for a left guard at 312. 32in arms, which is very, very short, sixth percentile when compared to other guard prospects at the combine. And by the way, this is over the last 26 years. So, it’s a pretty good sample size. Some of it is from an older era of football, but a lot of it is not. So, right off the bat, there are two things that stand out. He’s very tall, and he’s got very short arms. sixth percentile, 32 in flat. That’s not what you love seeing. And he’s also got some pretty small hands. 9 and 1/2 in hands, 22nd percentile. So, compared to other guards, his hands are small. I don’t know if that’s really a big issue. I don’t know if there’s a strong correlation between hand size and effectiveness, but it is worth noting. And he only did two drills at the combine, but he killed them both. He had the highest vert of any guard prospect ever at 36 1/2 in. It was literally the highest the highest on record vert jump for a guard prospect was 36 in flat. So he beat that. Now if you were to compare him to tackles, there would be a couple that beat him. And technically Zable mostly played tackle in college. So it depends on how you look at it. But if you’re looking at him as a guard, his vert was literally record setting. And his broad jump was not that far behind. 9’3 in broad jump 92nd percentile. So phenomenal explosion as an athlete. That’s what can be said about him. He didn’t do the other drills, but this indicates tremendous explosion. All right, so now we get into more of the numbers here. Let’s keep on going. We’re going to start with the COVID year of 2020. That was the first year of his collegiate career, first year at North Dakota State. And right away, you can see there isn’t a lot to go on, only five games played. And by the way, that’s every game where he played at least one snap. So there were quite a few games where he did not play. This was the COVID year. 188 snaps, which is not a terrible sample size, allowed two hurries and committed two penalties, which isn’t great, but it was his first year, so I think we can be pretty understanding. Remember, North Dakota State is for their pool a pretty big program. They’re certainly not on the level of a big power five program, but they do very well for the pool that they’re in. Basically, every snap he played was at right guard. So deriving meaningful information from this is going to be a little bit tricky because we’re not really looking at him as a right guard. He played two snaps at center. Um almost 2/3 of his snaps were run blocking snaps, 123 run blocking, 65 pass blocking. And of his run blocking snaps, most of them were gap based. He had 41 zone and 68 gap. And by the way, if the numbers don’t add up to the totals, just understand that there are some snaps, very rare snaps, where an offensive lineman will technically line up as a tight end. Like you can see that 2 plus 185 does not equal 188. It equals 187. That probably means there was like one snap where he wasn’t lined up on the offensive line at all. I didn’t feel the need to keep track of that because it’s irrelevant for our purposes. But yeah, um same with the run blocking stuff, by the way. um that not every snap is filed under zoner gap. If it’s not entirely clear, PFF just won’t categorize it. And on this sample size anyway, Z is able 65.2 PFF grade overall. So, a little above the C level run blocking 65.3 workable. And pass blocking was actually very good. 84.5. Again, not enough data to really derive much from. 2021 we get way more games, but we also get fewer snaps. He plays in 11 games, but for most of them, he barely plays at all. Mostly just kind of mop-up duty. 125 snaps, allowed one hurry, committed two penalties in that time. So, we are starting to see a little bit of a trend here, little bit of a concerning trend. Most of his snaps in 2021 came at left guard. 90 of his snaps came at left guard. 34 came at right guard, which was his original position from his first year. One snap came at center. So, good variety, but mostly left guard, which I mean, I I guess we can feel good about that. And a vast majority of his snaps were run blocking snaps. 97 run blocking snaps, only 28 pass blocking snaps. So, for the most part, he was a run blocker, which indicates that he came in at the end of the game when the game was decided. and North Dakota State was just running out the clock and about 2thirds of his run blocking snaps were gap and the remaining were zone. So for the most part, North Dakota State was running gap when they were running the ball, which is interesting because Zabel is such a good athlete, but we’ll get more to that a little bit later. Graded out well, not that it means a ton. 73.2, 74 run block, 74.4 pass block. It’s all pretty good, but it’s not a lot of data. Okay, 2022 was the year things really took off for Mr. Zable. He played in 13 games. He did not play the whole season in terms of snaps. He played less than 600 snaps, but he did play a lot. I believe he missed a couple of games. North Dakota State always plays a lot of games because they’re always making deep runs in their little playoff thing. So 582 represents most, but not all of the season. In those reps, he allowed one sack, two cute quarterback hits, and seven hurries. So that’s nine or 10 total quarterback pressures. Pretty good, especially given the fact that most of his reps came at tackle. Two penalties, which is actually good because it’s the same number of penalties the previous two years on way fewer snaps. So improvement. played a little bit at left tackle, played about 150 snaps at left guard, 14 snaps at center, but for the most part, he was a right tackle, 378 snaps at right tackle, and again, a pretty significant majority of his snaps were run blocking snaps, 402 compared to 180 pass blocking snaps. So, for the most part, North Dakota State ran the ball. And when they ran the ball, they much preferred gap over zone, which it is worth noting that the Clint Kubak offense the Seahawks will be running this year is mostly about zone. Now, I’m not worried about this, and I’ll get to why in a minute here, but it is worth noting that North Dakota State mostly ran Gap. They just kind of ran people over because they could. Uh, his PFF grades dipped a little bit in 2022, but that’s not unexpected because his playing time went up so far. Still above sea level, 68.7, pretty good. 67.3 run blocking, 66.3 pass blocking, so workable. Nothing nothing too wrong with it and pretty reasonable for a first year of being really a full-time player. 2023, however, was the year he became a full-time starter. actually played the whole season, played in, I believe, every game or very close to it at least. 15 games for North Dakota State, 911 snaps. So, he he got the full season. Uh allowed two sacks, two hits, five hurries, so about nine pressures total. Not bad. Again, remember he’s playing tackle for the most part in 2023. Eight penalties, though. eight penalties. Little bit of a concern. We’ll talk more about that later, but um over 200 of his snaps came at left guard. We can definitely say he built a decent amount of experience at left guard in his collegiate career. Three at right guard, but almost 700 of his snaps came at right tackle. That is where he played most of the season. Little bit more balanced this year. uh North Dakota State 411 pass blocking snaps compared to 500 run blocking snaps. So more balanced, more experience doing different stuff, but still primarily gapbased run blocking. 328 gap compared to 141 zone. That’s a pretty big discrepancy. And it does bear note that this is not necessarily the type of run blocking that Zel would even be best for. And he still did pretty good. PF grade almost an 80 76.7 run blocking, 88.5 pass blocking, which is almost elite. So we’ve got something cooking here. And that leads us to our final year, 2024, the most recent season. 16 games North Dakota State played in the championship game for their um pool of uh college football, almost 1,000 snaps, 970, allowed one sack, two hits, and four hurries. This despite playing the entire season at left tackle. So his pass protection numbers got more clean as he slid over to the hardest position to play on the offensive line. So pretty encouraging, pretty good. seven penalties though. Um maybe it’s understandable given it was his first full year at left tackle, but we we are going to have to loop back around on that. The uh seven penalties. So still more run blocking than pass blocking, but it’s pretty close now. 453 pass blocking snaps, 517 run blocking. You would expect a lot of run blocking snaps from a team that’s usually playing from ahead anyway. So it’s not like that’s weird. It’s pretty normal for a good team to run the ball a lot because they’re often trying to protect their lead. And this year, for the first time, North Dakota State started running more zone. They had almost 300 zone run plays according to PFF and 205 gap. So, they actually did more zone than gap. Maybe because of Zable. Maybe because Zable was such a good athlete, they wanted to uh harness that. graded over a 90 by Pro Football Focus 90.4 run blocking 86.4 very good and his pass blocking downright elite 93.1. So phenomenal year the fact that he played almost a thousand snaps at left tackle and only allowed seven quarterback pressures is pretty standout. Now he is do he’s not doing it at Alabama. He’s doing it at North Dakota State, but it’s still good. And there are some things about him that translate across any school, any program, and any level of opponent. So, if you take a look at the totals here, you can see a pretty full collegiate career. It is worth noting that a decent chunk of the games he played in, he did not start, and some games he barely played in at all, but nevertheless, 60 games total, 277 2,776 snaps, excuse me. So almost 2,800 snaps, four sacks allowed, six hits allowed, quarterback hits, 19 hurries allowed. So you’re looking at a total of 29 quarterback pressures across his five years. And a good chunk of those, almost half of those came when he was playing um tackle. And that’s going to be important for us to note going forward. uh 21 total penalties, 15 of which came in the final two years, which definitely merits some discussion as we go forward here, but we’ll get into that in a future video. Of his 2,776 snaps, 974 came at left tackle, 1, and 64 came at right tackle. So, about 2,000 came at tackle. That is not where he’s expected to play in the pros. In fact, there’s pretty much no chance he’s playing tackle in the pros. So, keep that in mind when you’re trying to figure out how you feel about him. He played 450 snaps at left guard, 222 at right guard, 17 at center. So, much less experience on the inside, which well, there’s a few different things to dissect there, and we’ll get to that later today. But those are the numbers. And of his time in college, 1137 of his snaps were pass blocking snaps. 1,639 of them were run blocking snaps. So, more experienced run blocking than pass blocking. Again, that’s to be expected when you’re playing on a really good team. 601 zone running plays, 932 gap running plays. So, good amounts of experience in both, but certainly more gap than zone. That obviously flipped in his final season, though, which I guess on some level is the year that we care about the most because it was the most recent. All right, so that is Grey’s Aable by the numbers. We’re going to do another video in a few hours. Keep an eye out for it. And then there should be a third video later today. See you guys soon. Go Hawks, everybody. Have a great day and let me know what you guys think down below. Have a good

What can the raw stats and numbers tell us about the new Seattle Seahawk?

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