Notre Dame had never produced two first-round running backs in the same NFL Draft. As of 11:42 PM ET on Thursday night, with the Seattle Seahawks turning in their card for Jadarian Price at pick 32, the Fighting Irish do — and the school's NFL pipeline at the position is now arguably the strongest in college football.
Jeremiyah Love went off the board first. The Arizona Cardinals selected him third overall, the highest a running back has been drafted since the New York Giants took Saquon Barkley with the second pick in 2018. Love is the first Cardinals running back drafted in the first round since Beanie Wells (No. 31 overall) in 2009 and the highest the franchise has selected at the position since Garrison Hearst was taken third overall in 1993. The pick was a surprise to most published boards — Daniel Jeremiah had Love at 12, PFF at 9, our internal board at 11 — but the Cardinals have spent two offseasons signaling they were going to invest heavily on offense, and Love is the kind of three-down workload back who solves their two-year backfield problem at a single pick.
The Love selection drew immediate comparisons to the Saquon Barkley pick on grading and on team-building philosophy. Both backs profile as workhorse three-down players with elite contact balance and pass-game involvement. Both went to teams whose offensive lines were not yet ready to support a top-five RB workload. The Cardinals' offensive line, however, is materially better in 2026 than the Giants' was in 2018; Arizona allocated three of its top six picks last year to the front five, and the run-blocking grade entering this draft was a top-eight league mark. If the Cardinals' projected jump from "improving" to "good" actually materializes in 2026, Love is going to be the offensive rookie of the year favorite by Halloween.
Jadarian Price closed Round 1 with the 32nd pick, going to a Seattle Seahawks team that needed a clear running-back-of-the-future answer behind Kenneth Walker III. The Pro Football Network's analyst panel publicly questioned the value at the slot — "no value" was the lede on PFSN's instant grade — but the fit is cleaner than the value scoring suggests. Price's calling card at Notre Dame was as a complementary back to Love: 5.7 yards per carry in 2025, third-down passing-game polish that Love did not have, and a pass-protection grade that PFF tracked at 79.4 (Walker's rookie-year mark was 60.1). Seattle's offensive coordinator John Benton has spent his career building two-back rotations and Price is the second piece of one.
The school-level story is the more interesting one. Notre Dame produced 13 NFL Draft picks across the 2025 and 2026 cycles, the most of any program in the NFC's "talent pipeline" tier and second nationally only to Ohio State (25). What used to be the Marcus Freeman recruiting question — can a Notre Dame staff land top-fifty national talent against the SEC and Big Ten — is now a question that has been answered on multiple consecutive cycles, and answered at the position college football used to think Notre Dame couldn't recruit. Love was a top-100 national recruit. Price was a top-250 recruit who Freeman developed in two years from third-string to first-round. The 2027 board for Notre Dame at the position now reads: Eli Raridon already in the NFL (drafted 95 by New England), Aneyas Williams returning as the lead back, and four 2027 high school commits that 247Sports has in the top 100 nationally.
The Round 1 history is in the books. The recruiting trail, in real time, is the next chapter.