Notre Dame coach: Seahawks top pick Price’s ‘best is yet to come’

If anybody knows exactly what new Seattle Seahawks running back Jadarian Price is capable of, it’s his college coach: Marcus Freeman of Notre Dame.

Seahawks pick Jadarian Price says he’s ‘coming to the right offense’

Freeman’s Fighting Irish were the beneficiary of Price’s production over the past three seasons, but it doesn’t sound like he would be surprised if Price does even more in the NFL after the Seahawks drafted him No. 32 overall in the first round.

“He’s a complete running back,” Freeman told Seattle Sports’ Bump and Stacy on Wednesday. “You see his ability to make explosive plays. His ability to get east and west and then vertical is as fast as anybody I’ve ever seen. He can truly outrun a defense horizontally and then vertically at the drop of a dime. And then he brings so much special teams value. He’s had multiple kickoff returns for touchdowns. At any moment he’s a home run threat, and that’s in multiple phases of the game.

“And the other thing he’s doing, he’s improving out of the backfield catching the football. He’s becoming a guy that you can depend on to throw the ball out of the backfield. He’s getting better at pass protecting. And I still think he has a ceiling that’s higher than really what he’s even hit yet. His best is yet to come.”

That’s an exciting thought as Price joins the team that won the Super Bowl last season.

The interesting thing about Price is that he’s likely to be the No. 1 running back for the Seahawks to start the 2026 season after serving as the backup at Notre Dame to Jeremiyah Love, who the NFC West rival Arizona Cardinals took with the No. 3 overall pick a week ago. It certainly says something about Price that he stayed at Notre Dame despite having the chance to leave the Fighting Irish to go somewhere that would have given him more NIL money and a No. 1 running back spot.

Why Jadarian Price passed up more money to stay at Notre Dame

“He had opportunities in the moment to go make more money to be RB 1, and instead he made the decision to get his Notre Dame degree, to give up certain instant gratifications in terms of the carries and more money probably,” Freeman said. “In return, he became a first-round pick. Like, that is such a great example I want for our entire team is that he didn’t take the instant gratification. He saw the value of Notre Dame. He saw the value of his degree. He saw the value of, hey, I’m going to get enough carries to show the NFL what I can do, and he took advantage of those opportunities.”

Freeman had much more to share about Price in the conversation, which you can hear in the video player in this post. Catch Bump and Stacy from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. weekdays on Seattle Sports.

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