Draft day 3: Seahawks trade Sam Howell, pick versatile D-lineman, Notre Dame’s Rylie Mills
The morning after they selected Jalen Milroe, the Seahawks sent away a quarterback they no longer needed. Or wanted.
Seattle traded backup Sam Howell to the Minnesota Vikings Saturday morning, for a fifth-round draft choice.
Amid two other trades at about the same time, the Seahawks used that 142nd-overall pick from the Vikings they got for Howell in the 2025 NFL draft to select Rylie Mills, a defensive tackle who can also play end.
“Yeah, some moving parts and pieces, but that’s kind of why you go into it prepared,” Seahawks assistant general manager Nolan Teasley siad. “You can continue to communicate throughout so when the (chaos starts), you know that you went in with intent, you went in with a plan and that can calm you down in those moments.”
The 6-foot-5, 291-pound Mills tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee during the College Football Playoffs in late December.
“But, honestly, I’m way ahead of schedule,” Mills said Saturday morning.
He said his hope is to be on the field before Seahawks training camp begins in late July.
Teasley wouldn’t comment Saturday after the pick whether that’s the timetable the team has for Mills to practice in the NFL for the first time.
What kind of guy are the Seahawks getting in Mills?
He tore his ACL in Notre Dame’s first-round playoff win over Indiana in South Bend last December. The Irish advanced to play Georgia in the Sugar Bowl New Year’s weekend. Notre Dame’s medical staffers prohibited Mills from flying to New Orleans to be with his team. They feared blood clots in his leg.
“After we won that game, I was like, ‘Look, I can’t sit at home and watch another game on the couch.’ I was going insane,” Mills told The News Tribune live on KJR radio soon after Seattle drafted him Saturday. “’We’ve got to figure something out.’”
Notre Dame was next playing in the Orange Bowl against Penn State in the College Football Semifinals.
Mills got a deal with an RV dealer in Elkhart, Indiana, a half hour from South Bend, thanks to one of Notre Dame’s donors.
He took a 25-hour RV ride from Indiana to Miami to be with his Fighting Irish.
“Me, my parents, my girlfriend, the dog, and my uncle Paul, who is a firefighter, drove straight down to Miami for the Orange Bowl,” Mills said, chuckling 3 1/2 months after the trek.
“We got closer as a family. That’s all I know.”
Presumably via a plane this time, Mills was at his brother’s home in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Saturday morning when the Seahawks called him. They had met with him at the league’s scouting combine in late February, and then hosted him at team headquarters on a top-30 prospect visit this spring.
“I was pumped, man. I was excited,” he said of Seattle’s call.
“They are going to get someone who’s gritty...I want to be dominant.”
The Seahawks are getting another multi-positional lineman for coach Mike Macdonald’s varied defensive front.
“Think of him as a poor man’s Leonard Williams,” Tacoma-based NFL draft guru Rob Rang of Fox Sports told The News Tribune live on KJR-FM radio Saturday after the choice, referring to the Seahawks’ veteran end-tackle force.
“Leonard Williams is the first guy they brought up to me as a guy...they want me to model my game after,” Mills told KJR a few minutes later.
Rang also said of Mills: “This is a pick that makes a lot of sense, as for the rotation along the defensive line.
“He provided a lot of the blue-collar mentality at Notre Dame. ...He is the tough guy.”
Two picks after the Seahawks selected Mills, they traded out of the 144th-overall choice they had acquired minutes earlier from New England, to the Cleveland Browns. Seattle acquired the 166th-overall pick in the fifth round from the Browns, plus the 192nd pick to get a choice the Seahawks didn’t have in the sixth round.
The Browns used that 144th pick the Seahawks traded to them to draft...Shedeur Sanders, the quarterback from Colorado many thought would be a first-round selection.
Seattle general manager John Schneider did what he always does: He traded, down, twice, around a trade up. Seattle traded its only pick of the fourth round of the NFL draft Saturday to New England to move down seven spots into early in round five. The Seahawks got from the Patriots a third pick in the fifth round, plus an additional, third choice in the seventh and final round Saturday.
It was the 40th, 41st and 42nd trades involving a draft choice Schneider has made in 16 drafts as Seahawks GM.
This story was originally published April 26, 2025 at 11:49 AM with the headline "Draft day 3: Seahawks trade Sam Howell, pick versatile D-lineman, Notre Dame’s Rylie Mills."
