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# Grey Zabel Plows Through Offseason Program, Ready to Anchor Seahawks’ O-Line in Year 2
- URL: https://www.emeraldcityspectrum.com/grey-zabel-plows-through-offseason-program-anchor-seattle-seahawks-line/
- Published: 2026-06-13T02:09:35.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-08T05:52:42.000Z
- Author: Corbin Smith
- Tags: Features, Seahawks, Grey Zabel

RENTON, Wash. - Much has changed for Grey Zabel since breaking into the NFL as a first round draft choice 12 months and change ago.

Once a wide-eyed rookie making the monumental jump from FCS powerhouse North Dakota State to the Seattle Seahawks, Zabel isn’t trying to stay above water this time around. Rolling into his sophomore season as a key cog in a much-improved offensive line with all five starters returning from a year ago, he now carries the titles of respected veteran, ascending star, and most notably, with a gaudy ring in tow as proof, Super Bowl LX champion.

Even if Zabel downplayed life being much different for him these days aside from being noticed in public more frequently, he’s felt the difference - to an extent - on the field in his first full NFL offseason.

“I think the game's just slowing down a little bit. Not by much though,” Zabel told reporters following the conclusion of Seattle’s mandatory minicamp on Thursday. “You still got a lot to learn, still got a lot to improve. If anything, you just got 20 something games now to go back and watch and figure out how you can improve and what to get better at. But I think JB \[coach John Benton\] does a great job with kind of having me learn and grow every single day to be the player I want to be come the first game of the season.”

This time a year ago, while Zabel already had established himself as the clear starter at left guard for the Seahawks on day one, like most rookies entering the league, he caught himself paddling against the current simply trying to stay afloat learning a new playbook, acclimating to a new coaching staff, and building chemistry with new teammates. It’d be an understatement to call the process a whirlwind while also dealing with the expectations that come with the territory being a first rounder.

But Zabel did have a few major advantages working in his favor that allowed for him to carve out immediate success in Seattle. For one, center Jalen Sundell - who also starred at North Dakota State and played a bunch of games alongside Zabel - beat out Olu Oluwatimi for the starting role in training camp, providing beneficial familiarity for the two first-time NFL starters to lean on. He also landed in the ideal offensive system with coordinator Klint Kubiak and Benton deploying a zone-centric run game that best catered to his athletic gifts and play style.

Never truly pushed for his starting job from the moment he first arrived at the Virginia Mason Athletic Center, the Seahawks installed Zabel in the starting lineup right out of the gate between left tackle Charles Cross and Sundell, and he quickly established himself as one of the best young guards in the sport by earning PFWA All-Rookie team honors. Starting all 17 regular season games, he didn’t allow a single sack until Week 16 and finished with 24 pressures allowed on 553 pass blocking snaps, finishing with a respectable 97.5 Pass Block Efficiency Rate and tied for the 13th-fewest sacks allowed among qualified guards, per Pro Football Focus.

In the playoffs, while Zabel did have some pass protection issues in the Super Bowl allowing five pressures against Sam Darnold, he stepped up his game as a run blocker, posting the third-best run blocking grade among guards (78.0) to help Ken Walker III rush for 313 yards and four touchdowns in three postseason wins on the way to a Lombardi Trophy.

Now a little over four months removed from the historic win in Santa Clara, with new offensive coordinator Brian Fleury not re-inventing the wheel by “blending his version with our version” system-wise to ease the transition and rare continuity with all four other starters from the Super Bowl squad returning for the title defense, Zabel’s focus has shifted to fine tuning his technique across the board and honing in on details this spring under the guidance of Benton to take his game to the next level.

“Last year, you come in and you're just completely swimming in the playbook and you're just trying to play ball and survive and stay in front of your guy,” Zabel explained. “This offseason, it was more of what type of footwork, what type of set, what type of hand placement can I be using on certain plays, understanding if it's a five step drop or a seven step drop, the time and the angle and all that stuff. So it was good to have this offseason to improve, and we're looking forward to this next year.”

If there’s one thing that hasn’t changed at all for Zabel, whether with a Super Bowl ring or not, there won’t be much down time during his summer “break” between minicamp and training camp. No shortage of work remains to be done at his 250-acre farm in South Dakota, including spraying crops, building a new feed lot for livestock, and of course, picking rocks out of the fields.

But those agricultural chores coupled with a strenuous weight lifting regimen will keep Zabel in tip top shape for the upcoming season, and using Rocky Balboa’s unconventional methods in *Rocky IV* as a possible inspiration, there may be a farm workout montage dragging a wagon of soybeans or shoving 1,000-pound hay bales as a makeshift blocking dummy ready to go viral on YouTube by the time he reports back to Seattle for training camp in late July.

“We might have to. I feel like there's some newer, modern equipment I should probably be using, but what a training scene. Got to go back and watch that before this offseason, but, yeah, it should be fun.”