April 5, 2026, 12:30 p.m. PT<\/p>\n
The Seattle Seahawks are in prime position to draft the player with the most fascinating story in the NFL Draft this year, and it\u2019s someone who\u2019s never played organized football.<\/p>\n
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\u2019ll ever see. NFL.com\u2019s top draft analyst Lance Zierlein had this to say about it:<\/p>\n
The Athletic\u2019s Bruce Feldman, known for making his famous \u201cFeldman\u2019s Freaks\u201d list each year of the most athletically gifted draft prospects, also called Bernard the \u201cbiggest freak athlete in this year\u2019s NFL draft\u201d after watching him test.<\/p>\n
His article in The Athletic this morning<\/a> compared Bernard to Victor Wembanyama, the alien-like talent who\u2019s taking over the NBA and basketball world in his early twenties. Bernard\u2019s pre-draft trainer Jordan Luallen, who trains other top prospects every single year for the draft, called him the \u201cmost explosive athlete I\u2019ve ever seen in my life\u201d.<\/p>\n So, why would the Seahawks be the one to take him and not another team?<\/p>\n Expert NFL picks: Exclusive betting insights only at USA TODAY.<\/a><\/p>\n This week, I wrote about the Seahawks\u2019 unique ability to favor upside after a Super Bowl win<\/a>. They aren\u2019t 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 \u201cthree-year project\u201d.<\/p>\n If anyone can afford to draft a player and develop them for the most possible time without playing, it\u2019s Seattle. In three years, they\u2019ll 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?<\/p>\n The Seahawks don\u2019t hold a pick later than No. 188, so they\u2019d 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\u2019d be enough to snag him before the rest of the league does. If they did, it\u2019d be one of the most exciting developments in practice and camp over the next few years, and add intrigue to what\u2019ll already be the most anticipated season of Hard Knocks in history<\/a> this summer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"April 5, 2026, 12:30 p.m. PT The Seattle Seahawks are in prime position to draft the player with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":855945,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2081],"tags":[95878,7,6,238,237,261,2635,96186,96187,95882,100250,95896,96135,95888,95906,95883,113309,95881],"class_list":{"0":"post-855944","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-seattle-seahawks","8":"tag-accessfree","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-nfl","11":"tag-seahawks","12":"tag-seattle","13":"tag-seattle-seahawks","14":"tag-seattleseahawks","15":"tag-sstssportsnflseahawks","16":"tag-sstsnseahawks","17":"tag-tagamerican-football","18":"tag-tagleonard-williams","19":"tag-tagnational-sports","20":"tag-tagnba","21":"tag-tagnfl","22":"tag-tagoverall-positive","23":"tag-tagsports-news","24":"tag-tagvictor-wembanyama","25":"tag-typestory"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116354671219266619","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/855944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=855944"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/855944\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/855945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=855944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=855944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=855944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}