With the 18th pick in the 1st round of the 2025 National Football League draft, the Seattle Seahawks selected Grey Zabel, offensive lineman from North Dakota State University.
Grey Zabel is headed to Seattle 🔥 pic.twitter.com/11XEoDWd7q
— ESPN (@espn) April 25, 2025
Zabel is the eighth person in history to be born in South Dakota and to be drafted in the first round of the NFL draft.
His resume as a prep athlete for Pierre TF Riggs and college football player for NDSU are both impressive. In high school with the Governors, Zabel was a part of three straight state football championship teams. He was also a team captain his senior year, was a two-time all-state honoree, and was named the outstanding lineman in the 2019 state football title game.
At NDSU, Zabel started 41 games for the Bison. Throughout his five seasons, he played left tackle, right tackle, left guard, and right guard. In his final season in 2024, Zabel played left tackle where he earned FCS All-American First Team honors. He also was a part of two FCS National Championship teams at NDSU – 2021 and 2024.
Zabel’s draft stock rose during the Senior Bowl in January where he dominated.
Charlie Campbell of Walter Football wrote a scouting report on Zabel. He listed some of his strengths as “good anchor, good size for an interior blocker, and fights and gets physical with defenders.”
Zabel is the first offensive lineman from South Dakota to get drafted since Matt Farniok in 2021 (7th round pick by Dallas Cowboys). He joins Riley Reiff as the only other South Dakotan offensive lineman to be drafted in the first round.
