I have watched and graded 270 players for the 2026 Horizontal Board. I’ve written up several of these players during various blog posts and I have 33,474 unpublished notes (I’ll share them on any player the Seahawks draft if I didn’t write about them specifically).
I’ve put more work into this class than any previous years — and I promise to go even further for 2027, in what could be a fascinating class.
This year I’ve been able to add more data analytics to the grading and I want to thank those who were responsible for helping me. I want to thank the incredible Curtis Allen for all of his work. I want to thank Robbie, Adam and Jeff for streaming with me so often. I want to thank the people who helped by taking calls and sharing info and opinions, especially when it challenged my own thinking on certain things.
In particular I also want to thank everyone who is a part of this community.
I started doing this blog in 2008 and the last 12 months have been the best. I hit a new goal with a weekly spot on Seattle radio (and you can check out the latest spot by clicking here). That doesn’t happen without the support of you. Watching this team rise to the Super Bowl, then attending in person, was a life affirming moment for many reasons.
I won’t bore you too much with stuff about my own personal experiences over the years but writing this blog became quite difficult for a period between 2018 and 2023. I didn’t think the team was going in the right direction, I thought they made some poor moves and I wasn’t going to sit and pretend I thought everything was OK just because it’d make my life easier. Some of the abuse, negativity and personal stuff got really nasty at times.
I was never ‘negative for the sake of it’ regardless of what some fans or the Seahawks Reddit page thought. I simply thought Russell Wilson was going to get traded, that they wildly overpaid for Jamal Adams, that they consistently failed to sufficiently address the pass-rush, that they wasted money in free agency too often and that they weren’t going to draft Jalen Carter. I don’t think any of these criticisms were unfair. I’m sure, with hindsight, most people would agree.
I was desperate to be upbeat and the draft classes from 2022 onwards generated major positivity on this blog. I’ve given the Seahawks top grades every year since then. John Schneider has done an outstanding job building up this roster and he now has a staff that is able to capitalise on the work of the personnel department.
Watching the Seahawks win another Super Bowl is something I wasn’t sure we’d experience again. Yet here we are, picking 32nd. The fans are completely united for the first time in a long time.
So we’re nearly at the latest draft and I’m sure the Seahawks will do another good job adding more players who can help drive this team forwards. I hope the board below is useful if you want to use it to follow along. The grades are my opinion and I’ll probably get more wrong than I get right. I’ve done the work though.
I’ll just say again how much I appreciate you all. The great people in the comments who are so respectful to each other. Those of you who support via Patreon and Super Chat, to assist with the growing cost of running this website. To the people who are so generous with their feedback and have helped enable me to gain so much enjoyment from doing this blog.
Tomorrow I will do my final mock draft and I will have a stream with Jeff.
Here is my final horizontal board for the 2026 draft class. This is how I have graded individual players. Those marked in red either have current injuries or reported injury concerns/injury history. Those marked in purple have reported character related issues that would require investigation by a team.
