Jadarian Price had his family, friends and high school teammates around him. He was pacing most of the night.
The running back from Notre Dame was home in Denison, Texas, on the northern edge of the huge state by the Red River and the Oklahoma border. He’d been watching and watching, pacing and pacing, through three hours of the nationally televised NFL draft.
“It was wild because I was walking around the whole room,” Price said late Thursday night. “And as soon as Seattle was up, I was like, ‘All right, this is the last one. I’m going to sit down.’
It was from Seahawks general manager John Schneider.
“Hey, man, we’re getting ready to pick you right here, brother,” Seattle’s GM told the 22-year-old Price.
The Super Bowl champions were drafting Price 32nd, the final pick of the first round, to replace Kenneth Walker. The Super Bowl MVP left Seattle for free-agency riches with Kansas City last month.
Upon hearing Schneider’s voice on the line, Price started crying.
Can hear Jadarian Price moved to tears as John Schneider tells him the #Seahawks are picking him to end the 1st round.Every one of these draft choices has a path. They worked their football lives chasing a dream relatively few realize. Those dreams are coming true this weekend. https://t.co/maUvvK4sTB
“The emotions just hit,” Price said from Denison about a half hour later.
“I thought I would be a little more calm. But that phone call was a little different. When you get that phone call it’s just immediate tears and joy.”
When Jadarian was 12 years old growing up in north Texas, doctors there diagnosed his mother with breast cancer.
Jessica Butler is Price’s his life, “my rock,” he’s called her. She is a single mom. She was raising her son she had when she was 17, plus his two younger sisters, Kzaria and Lyricah. Price’s grandparents and an uncle drove Butler to her 16 rounds of chemotherapy. The 12-year-old Price cooked for and tended to his younger sisters, 10 and 6 years old at the time, while he also played football and went into middle school.
His mother thought she was going to die. She feared leaving behind three children 12 and under.
She lived. In 2017, doctors who gave her a possible death sentence two years earlier declared Jessica Butler cancer free.
Indescribably buoyed, Price went on to Denison High School. He rushed for 4,990 all-purpose yards and 55 touchdowns over 39 games. As a senior, he rushed for 1,803 yards, average more than 9 yards per carry. He was his Texas district’s offensive player of the year in 2020 and 2021.
There, he was second string his three college years behind Jeremiyah Love. Love was considered one of the best offensive players in college football. Thursday, about 2 1/2 hours before the Seahawks called Price, the Arizona Cardinals made Love the third pick in the draft.
Yet during those three years on second string, Price never left Notre Dame. He had offers for millions of dollars in NIL money, lucrative deals to do what over 10,500 college football players do each year: Transfer.
How many first-round picks were college backups through their senior year?
Price staying and flourishing anyway showed Seahawks coach Mike Macdonald the running back’s loyalty and character. Those are two of the traits Macdonald treats as bedrocks to the culture and brotherhood in Seattle’s locker room. Players and coaches say that unique culture was the reason Seattle won the Super Bowl in February.
“You learn about the person, about the leadership, the resiliency, the humility, just the commitment to Notre Dame by staying there,” Macdonald said after drafting Price Thursday night.