April 5, 2026, 12:30 p.m. PT

The Seattle Seahawks are in prime position to draft the player with the most fascinating story in the NFL Draft this year, and it’s someone who’s never played organized football.

Uar Bernard was completely unknown to even the most savvy draft analysts two days ago. On Friday, he lit up the NFL world with the craziest athletic testing numbers you’ll ever see. NFL.com’s top draft analyst Lance Zierlein had this to say about it:

The Athletic’s Bruce Feldman, known for making his famous “Feldman’s Freaks” list each year of the most athletically gifted draft prospects, also called Bernard the “biggest freak athlete in this year’s NFL draft” after watching him test.

His article in The Athletic this morning compared Bernard to Victor Wembanyama, the alien-like talent who’s taking over the NBA and basketball world in his early twenties. Bernard’s pre-draft trainer Jordan Luallen, who trains other top prospects every single year for the draft, called him the “most explosive athlete I’ve ever seen in my life”.

So, why would the Seahawks be the one to take him and not another team?

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This week, I wrote about the Seahawks’ unique ability to favor upside after a Super Bowl win. They aren’t desperate for replacement level starters or even rotational pieces. They only have four picks, but they filled out their depth in free agency. They covered their bases before the draft. Now, they get to take big, exciting swings for upside- and Bernard represents just that. Feldman went on to say he views him as a “three-year project”.

If anyone can afford to draft a player and develop them for the most possible time without playing, it’s Seattle. In three years, they’ll likely be starting to pay Byron Murphy II, getting ready to pay Grey Zabel and Nick Emmanwori, and the status of a Leonard Williams would be up in the air. What better player could Bernard possibly learn from than the Big Cat himself?

The Seahawks don’t hold a pick later than No. 188, so they’d be taking him in the early-6th Round, a fair bit ahead of the late-7th Round value Zierlein projected barring a trade down. Hopefully that’d be enough to snag him before the rest of the league does. If they did, it’d be one of the most exciting developments in practice and camp over the next few years, and add intrigue to what’ll already be the most anticipated season of Hard Knocks in history this summer.