Field Gulls
Hopefully you don’t tire quickly of discussing the Seattle Seahawks rookie class, because I have a sense this class will be worthy of a lot of discussion this year.
The biggest early encouragement about the ‘25 draft class is that none of the first five picks (skipping Rylie Mills) has looked outmatched, like at all. The top half of the rookie class just looks like they are or may very well become comfortable NFL players. That’s a good class, and the early signs are good.
One of the most standout-ish of the standouts is the last guy on the list: wide receiver Tory Horton. Horton ended up as a fifth-round pick purely because of injury scares, and the hype has only been building since his first day. One of the best ways to tell if a player is legit, is not to listen to the goofballs like me or Steven A. Smith, but the players themselves. Riq Woolen called him Jerry Rice junior, and also had a funny anecdote about watching his play.
Similarly, my favorite stat on Horton from Preseason Week 1, by far, was 7 targets. With only three receptions, if this were the regular season and if this were, say DK Metcalf, we would call that a bad game.
But it is not, and he is not.
Who cares how inaccurate Drew Lock is right now? The telling info in Horton leading the team in targets – doubling the next receiver – is that in continues to reveal how much the players value Horton. They trust him, they are looking for him in real game moments. It seems like every week, some genuine NFL teammate of his is coming out and saying he’s really good.
And that’s a pretty big deal for a fifth-round rookie. We’ve seen it before in this city.
Preseason is not about production, it’s about preparation and process. To score a touchdown was just icing on what has been another head-turning Seattle summer out of a fifth round pick. I would not be surprised if by the end of the season, he’s more in the conversation as WR3 than even Marquez Valdez-Scantling, but one August game is not enough to stake a claim there. Not yet at least.
