Jadarian Price was supposed to have this job locked up. Three months after the Seattle Seahawks made him the first running back off the board following Kenneth Walker III’s departure, the rookie is instead walking into training camp having to win it.
The Seahawks used the No. 32 overall pick in the 2026 NFL Draft on the former Notre Dame standout, betting his blend of vision and burst could replace the production Walker took with him to Kansas City. Walker signed a three-year free-agent deal with the Chiefs this offseason after winning Super Bowl MVP, according to NFL.com. That left a hole at the position for the defending champions, and Price looked like the clean answer.
It hasn’t played out that way so far. George Holani, a third-year back who spent last season as Seattle’s primary backup, has taken the early lead in the competition. According to Seahawks On SI, ESPN’s Brady Henderson reported that Holani had the “first crack” at running with Seattle’s first-team offense throughout the spring, and Bleacher Report’s Mo Moton went as far as naming Price the team’s top bust candidate for 2026 — not because Price has played poorly, but because Holani has taken advantage of every rep he’s gotten.
How Jadarian Price ended up in a camp battle
None of this was expected on draft night. Seahawks general manager John Schneider made no secret of the fact he’d tried to trade back from pick No. 32 to collect more capital, but no partner emerged as the first round wound down in Pittsburgh. Rather than reach or pass, Seattle stayed put and took the player it had rated as the top talent left on the board.
“Instant acceleration, vision, cut back ability, but his ability to work it back, not just completely bouncing all the time, working it back inside,” Schneider said of Price after the pick, according to the Seahawks’ official site. “And then probably his contact balance. One of his super talents is his ability to cut back and crease it. He has home run speed; he has a lot of explosive runs.”
Schneider specifically pointed to Price’s performance against USC as evidence of that explosiveness. In that game, Price ran for 87 yards and a touchdown on 13 carries and added a 100-yard kickoff return score in a 34-24 Notre Dame win, a game Field Gulls later broke down as a preview of the outside-zone skill set the Seahawks are counting on. “The USC game was ridiculous,” Schneider said. “Just that instant acceleration.”
The tools are real. Price closed his final season at Notre Dame averaging 6.0 yards per carry, rushing for 674 yards and 11 touchdowns on just 113 carries while splitting time with Heisman finalist Jeremiyah Love, who went third overall to the Cardinals. Price also scored twice on kickoff returns that year. It’s a small sample by first-round running back standards — Field Gulls noted he finished his college career with only 295 total touches across three seasons — but the per-touch production stood out enough that Price was widely considered the second-best back in the class.
George Holani’s strong spring changes the picture
What Price didn’t count on was Holani playing his way into the conversation. Zach Charbonnet, Seattle’s presumed complementary piece in the backfield, is still working back from the torn ACL he suffered in the 2025 playoffs and had surgery on in February. Seahawks head coach Mike Macdonald hasn’t ruled out a Week 1 return for Charbonnet, telling reporters in June, “Everything’s possible. If you’re going to guess what type of schedule Zach Charbonnet would be on, that’s the type of schedule he’s on,” according to NFL.com. But nothing is confirmed there either.
With Charbonnet out and Price still adjusting to a pro workload, that opened the door for Holani to take first-team reps for most of organized team activities and minicamp. Seahawks On SI’s Michael Hanich named Holani the biggest winner of minicamp. That’s a notable shift from where things stood on draft night, when Price was framed as the clear front-runner to replace Walker’s touches.
None of this means Price is buried on the depth chart. He’s a first-round pick with a fully guaranteed four-year, $16.783 million contract, according to the Union-Bulletin, and Seattle doesn’t invest that kind of draft capital in a running back to keep him on the bench. Training camp — with pads on and live contact returning — is exactly the setting where his combination of vision and contact balance could separate him from Holani in a way spring practices in shorts couldn’t show.
| Player | 2025 College/Pro Role | Current Status |
|---|---|---|
| Jadarian Price | 674 rush yds, 11 TD, 6.0 YPC at Notre Dame | Rookie, No. 32 overall pick |
| George Holani | Seattle backup RB | Held first-team reps through OTAs/minicamp |
| Zach Charbonnet | Seattle RB2, ACL surgery Feb. 2026 | Recovery timeline uncertain for Week 1 |
What decides this before Week 1
Seattle’s new offensive coordinator, Brian Fleury, has said he wants to lean on the ground game, which raises the stakes for whoever wins this job. Price’s fit in an outside-zone scheme was part of the appeal in April — his ability to press the line and cut back matches exactly what that system asks a back to do. But scheme fit on tape means less than what happens when the pads come on.
The Seahawks open training camp with rookies reporting July 17 and veterans arriving July 24, and Price will have padded practices and three preseason games — starting with Seattle’s preseason opener against the Cowboys — to close the gap Holani opened this spring. If Charbonnet isn’t ready for Week 1, the winner of this camp battle could be handling a significant share of Seattle’s backfield touches from the opener on.
Price came to Seattle with the physical tools to be a difference-maker. Whether he becomes the Seahawks’ lead back in 2026 now looks like it will actually get decided on the practice field, not in a draft-night press conference.
