Getting Centered: Successful Seahawks Makeover may Depend on an Undrafted Free Agent

Since the regular season only starts Sunday, against the San Francisco 49ers, it’s a little early to be handing out Seahawks team MVP awards. Yet, as one who enjoys dabbling in the odd frontiers of human experience, I’ll put it this way: If the Seahawks make the playoffs, the team MVP award automatically goes to Jalen Sundell.

Who is that, you rightly ask? He’s the guy hired to give the ball each offensive play to Sam Darnold, the new quarterback you selected with your guess. Centers rarely get love, or even like. It is time.

Among the starters to be introduced Sunday, Sundell is the whatiest-iffiest among a chubby number of what-ifs making up the 50th anniversary edition of Seattle’s pro gridiron shop. He came to Seattle unburdened by pedigree, signing in 2024 as an undrafted free agent out of North Dakota State, where he played mostly tackle. Sundell beat the odds to make the roster, then found a little action in 12 games as the Seahawks flailed hideously to find O-line adequacy. In week 15, filling in for the injured starter, Olu Oluwatimi, Sundell played 48 snaps and didn’t surrender a single pressure. Then this summer, Sundell won the grim struggle over Oluwatimi to become the starter.

Should the Seahawks improve sufficiently on offense by successfully running the ball — they were 28th in rushing yards last season and still won 10 games — to complement what seems to be a stout defense, Sundell will be hailed as unexpectedly helpful, confounding skeptics and delighting adherents. He would be the least, doing the most.

Chief among the adherents is football boss John Schneider, who has been the object of an off-season scream-fest from Nome to Pocatello to fix the damn line. We know he heard the caterwaul. He used the Seahawks’ pick in the first round, 18th overall, on Grey Zabel, one of those guard guys that Schneider once claimed are paid way over their NFL value.

Schneider’s break from that bias undoubtedly was inspired after the Nov. 3 contest against the Los Angeles Rams, who in overtime held a Seahawks run for no gain at fourth-and-1 at the LA 16-yard line. A few plays after the ghastly turnover on downs, Matthew Stafford threw a 39-yard TD pass for a 26-20 LA win. The Seahawks eventually would miss the playoffs by one game. Nomers and Pocatellers began lighting torches.

In fairness, last year’s O-line was under the direction of coordinator Ryan Grubb, who at 48 was in his rookie year as an assistant in the NFL, where the manly art of rushing is still celebrated. Grubb was a hero among the kids at the University Washington, where he had Michael Penix at QB and permission to hurl yonder a lot. New Seahawks coach Mike Macdonald, who was poached late from the Ravens, settled on Grubb out of desperation. The pair had season-long problems with playcalling, and Grubb was fired almost immediately after the Seahawks whiffed on the playoffs for the third time in four seasons.

Grubb’s successor, Klint Kubiak, 38, is on his fourth NFL OC job with a zone blocking scheme that has worked at each stop. He knows Macdonald witnessed much success with something similar in Baltimore, where the Ravens often ran the ball until large, sweaty, mean opponents wept.

From a distance, and with a small data sample at center, it’s hard to know if Sundell, 6-foot-5 and 300 pounds, has what it takes. What is known is whenever the Seahawks have been good, they’ve had a quality center.

From 2011 to 2014, two-time Pro Bowl selection Max Unger was the man in the middle of an O-line that won a Super Bowl. Some fans still haven’t forgiven Schneider for trading Unger for tight end Jimmy Graham. In 2005, the 13-3 team that sent Seattle to its first Super Bowl had three Pro Bowl selections on the O-line. Veteran fans likely remember two of them, tackle Walter Jones and guard Steven Hutchinson, both Hall of Fame selections. The third was center Robbie Tobeck, the former Washington State star. The three were together from 2003 to 2005, and I suspect receive Christmas presents every year from former Seahawks star RB Shaun Alexander.

The best Seahawks center played from 1994-97. Kevin Mawae started two seasons as a guard before moving over. He had a 16-year NFL career that included seven Pro Bowl selections and a gold jacket from the Hall of Fame in 2019. He was hired away in 1998 free agency by the New York Jets, who offered a five-year, $17 million deal, including a $5 million signing bonus, to make him at the time the NFL’s highest-paid center.

Despite a quarter of a century of NFL salary inflation later, the Seahawks are paying their starting center nowhere close to that. Sundell will make $960,000 this year. That buys a lot of hay in North Dakota, but if it buys one yard against the Rams, Seahawks fans will elevate him to Ungerian levels of admiration.

Then Schneider will trade him.

Seahawks 23, 49ers 20.

Seahawks season: 10-7.