Meet the Seahawks’ newest Mr. Personality, Julian Neal. Richard Sherman just did
On day one of his NFL life, Julian Neal came face to face, wits to wits, with a Seahawks and NFL legend.
Right in the middle of the rookie’s first practice in the league.
Early in 11-on-11 scrimmaging that began Seattle’s rookie minicamp Friday, Neal was in his new Seahawks jersey number 1, lined up at left cornerback. He was in press coverage opposite a young wide receiver near the sideline.
“Hey, 1!” Neal heard a voice shout from nearby, along that sideline. “What are you looking at when you are in press?!”
“And this was mid-rep,” Neal recalled later.
The voice?
It was Richard Sherman’s.
The likely future Hall of Famer Sherman is now 38, retired from football and a television analyst for Amazon Prime’s Thursday night package of NFL games. He played a decade-plus ago as a charter member of Seattle’s famed “Legion of Boom” secondary. Sherman still owns a home in Maple Valley. He’s a frequent visitor to Seahawks headquarters, a 15-mile drive from that home.
He was a three-time All-Pro and won Seattle’s first Super Bowl at the end of the 2014 season playing the same position, left cornerback, on the same field in the same uniform the also long, tall, aggressive Neal was practicing at Friday.
The 6-foot-2, 203-pound Neal (one inch shorter and eight pounds heavier than Sherman) dutifully told the legend where he was looking. Told him during the play.
Sherman sounded pleased. “OK,” Sherman told Neal. “All right.”
The legend and the rookie’s conversation continued immediately following practice.
Quite a day one in the NFL for a 23-year-old third-round draft choice, eh?
“Yeah, first day of minicamp, and RICHARD SHERMAN is coming up to me and telling me some stuff?” Neal said later, his voice rising incredulously.
“Man! Mid-practice!
“Stuff like that, it gets me pumped for the season.”
Julian Neal’s strong hat game
Neal became an internet sensation last weekend for what he did after Seattle made him the 99th overall pick to end day two of the draft.
Moments after the Seahawks selected him behind their second-round pick safety Bud Clark from TCU that night, Neal got on a speakerphone call with The News Tribune and other Seattle-area reporters.
One of the first things the new rookie said on that call about joining the champs moments earlier: “We’re goin’ back to back!”
And: “I’m the most physical corner in this draft class. ...I hit guys at the line. It’s box time!”
Then KJR analyst and former NFL quarterback Hugh Millen asked Neal what coverage the cornerback preferred in the fourth quarter with the game on the line.
“Press!” Neal said, scoffing. “I’m going to go punch on somebody. I’m going to go punch somebody at the line. I’m in press. I’m going to get all up in your face.”
Then Neal on Instagram — then the Seahawks all over their team social-media sites online — posted how it came to be that a Seahawks cap was the only one he had at his family’s San Francisco home while he watched the second day of the NFL draft awaiting his selection.
“A certain company was supposed to send me all 32. Two days before draft day, my assistant texted me and said it wouldn’t be there by the weekend,” Neal explained Friday.
He thought, “OK, I can either get a couple or can just get one.”
He thought of how well he thought his pre-draft, top-30 prospect visit went with Seattle.
“Plus, my auntie, 12 years a 12s fan.”
So he told her: “Go get me a Seahawks hat, Auntie. Just go get me a Seahawks hat. That’s all I need.”
Neal says that explains why he was so exuberant upon the Super Bowl champions calling him to end round three and drafting him as the second of their four defensive backs the Seahawks selected last weekend.
“See, people don’t understand that’s why I was so juiced in my video,” Neal said Friday. “That’s why I was so juiced, because it was, literally, anticipation. It really came true.”
Her aunt’s reaction?
“She was juiced. Turnt!” he said. “I can’t explain it. It was a different kind of feeling.
“Also, I knew this was going to be the perfect place to display my talent.”
Why did he know that?
Julian Neal’s predraft Seahawks connections
Neal had his pre-draft visit with coach Mike Macdonald and his staff at Seahawks headquarters in Renton this spring.
He also had what he thought was a positive, formal interview with Seattle’s coaches at the league’s scouting combine in Indianapolis February into March.
Plus: Neal practiced the Seahawks drills and schemes last season at Arkansas.
His secondary coach last season with the Razorbacks was Nick Perry. Perry was on Macdonald’s first Seahawks coaching staff in 2024, as a defensive assistant working mostly with the...secondary. Perry had told Neal as a recruiting pitch to get him from his four years at Fresno State through college football’s transfer portal that if he came to Arkansas the coach would put him through with Razorbacks in 2025 Macdonald’s Seattle Seahawks drills, techniques and system of playing cornerback. That’s press coverage. Aggressive run support and tackling by cornerbacks. Versatility to play outside as a boundary corner and as a nickel, slot cover man inside.
“Literally, since day one when I went on my visit (to Fayetteville, Arkansas, before his final college season) he told me, ‘Yeah, if you come here, I know the coaches on the Seahawks. They all do the same that we do,’” Neal said.
“My formal visit at the combine, I was telling them everything they did. After that, we just had so much chemistry,
“So I’m, like, here, this is perfect.”
This story was originally published May 1, 2026 at 6:23 PM with the headline "Meet the Seahawks’ newest Mr. Personality, Julian Neal. Richard Sherman just did."
