Seahawks Move Swiftly Shoring Up Front Office With Six-Pack of Promotions
Success always comes with a price in the NFL, and while the Seattle Seahawks managed to escape the offseason losing only five free agents off of their Super Bowl LX team and kept a large chunk of their coaching staff intact with departing offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak being the biggest departure to replace, reigning Executive of the Year John Schneider will have a much different front office around him moving forward.
In a rare June hiring, the Minnesota Vikings tabbed ex-Seahawks assistant general manager Nolan Teasley as their new general manager, the first of several dominos that fell in quick order. Once Teasley had been introduced in Minneapolis, he made sure to steal a few former colleagues from Schneider’s front office cabinet to come with him, including bringing Minnesota native Trent Kirchner back home with the promotion of assistant general manager and hiring Azzaam Kapadia as assistant director of pro scouting. Kirchner and Kapadia served the titles of vice president of player personnel and NFL scout for Seattle last season, respectively.
Such a drain from the front office wouldn’t typically happen at this stage of the NFL calendar, but Schneider has been forced to make a major pivot retooling the personnel department around him, and ironically, it can be argued that the current situation actually benefited the Seahawks over the norm. Rather than suffering sighe organization had all hands on deck for the entire pre-NFL draft circuit, including the scouting combine, through free agency and the actual draft itself, with Teasley and Kirchner in particular having major voices in the player evaluation and decision-making process throughout in their prior roles.
From that standpoint, Schneider probably isn’t minding plugging holes at the top of the front office cabinet during the summer hiatus between OTAs and the start of training camp. Nonetheless, with the scouting process for the upcoming 2027 NFL Draft already well underway, those large vacancies left by Teasley and Kirchner needed to be filled in quick fashion, and Seattle stuck to status quo promoting from within to do so.
"I wish Nolan, Trent and Azzaam well in Minnesota, and I'm excited to be able to promote from within to maintain the culture and continuity in the personnel department," John Schneider said via the Seahawks website. "I love our core group of guys and we all enjoy working together as we spend so much time building this team throughout the year."
Just as Schneider has done several times in the past after losing high-profile evaluators such as Dan Morgan and Scott Fitterer to general manager positions elsewhere, the Seahawks kept the ladder standing upright for others within the organization who have waited for their opportunity to take on a bigger role. On Wednesday, the team announced a total of six in-house promotions, headlined by highly-respected scout Matt Berry and rising star Willie Schneider tag-teaming to fill Teasley’s gig as co-assistant general managers.
The elevation has been a long time for Berry, who will be entering his 19th season in Seattle and 26th overall in the league and should be a well-equipped successor for Teasley, offering more than enough tenure and evaluation-based versatility to thrive in his newest position. Since arriving in 2008, two years before Schneider took over, he has excelled every step along the way as he rose through the ranks, starting with six seasons as a regional scout who helped uncover much of the talent that helped build an eventual Super Bowl XLVIII champion before transitioning into a national scout position. He graduated to director of college scouting in 2015, staying in that role for eight seasons before Schneider tabbed him as senior director of player personnel in 2023.
In January 2025, Berry appeared to be on the cusp of landing his own general manager opportunity even before Teasley did, as the Nashville native interviewed for the Titans vacancy. But Tennessee chose to go a different direction and Schneider sweetened the pot to keep one of his top confidants happy in the Pacific Northwest by promoting him to vice president of player acquisition last season.
Compared to Teasley, whose track to NFL general manager largely had been built on the backbone of his chops in the pro personnel department, as evidenced by his aforementioned resume, Berry has done most of his flexing scouting and assessing college talent. While the Seahawks endured some lean drafts during his time directing college scouting from 2016 to 2022, the team continued to shine at finding late round and undrafted gems under his watchful eye, including running back Chris Carson, defensive tackle Poona Ford, and tackle George Fant.
Building the core of their latest Super Bowl team, Berry’s contributions over the past few years cannot be overlooked either. Directing player personnel in 2023 and 2024, he remained heavily involved collaborating with the scouting department and constructing Seattle’s big board for the NFL Draft, playing a key hand in selecting cornerback Devon Witherspoon, receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba, and defensive tackle Byron Murphy II in those drafts. He also had a major role in establishing and maintaining the alignment of the pro and college departments to maximize roster construction.
Berry won’t have to shoulder the load replacing Teasley on his own, however, and the Seahawks will be able to lean more heavily on his college scouting expertise with Willie Schneider, the nephew of John, working alongside him in tandem. Schneider has been director of pro scouting since 2023 after beginning his time in Seattle as an intern and several seasons as an assistant director of pro scouting, so he has cut his teeth scouting players from other teams already in the league and been instrumental in finding quality starters such as linebacker Drake Thomas and cornerback Josh Jobe, who were waiver wire pickups before joining the Seahawks.
It’s been a rapid ascent for Schneider, who played football at St. Thomas University before being hired as an intern in Seattle in 2014. Much like Teasley, he appears to be on the fast track to getting his own look at a general manager job elsewhere, but will have plenty to prove stepping into his new gig with more responsibilities on his plate. Fortunately, Berry’s wealth of experience should be a fine complement to him in a dual-assistant general manager arrangement.
Shuffling the deck underneath Berry and Schneider, the Seahawks also promoted former director of college scouting Aaron Hineline into Berry’s now-vacant role of director of player personnel. The Woodinville native and Central Washington graduate has been with the franchise since coming on board as an intern in 2006 and began his journey with four years in the pro personnel department before transitioning into college scouting. His diverse background, which includes being director of college scouting for the past three seasons, should play well in his new position with an even bigger voice in all roster-related evaluations and decisions.
In addition, Armani Perez jumped from assistant director of pro personnel into the director of pro personnel role, while Jason Barnes, who has been part of the organization for 21 years, received a much-deserved promotion to director of college scouting. The team also made a significant change in the analytics department, upgrading Patrick Ward to vice president of research and analytics.
