‘Surreal’: North Dakota State roomies starting together in Seahawks Super Bowl

Grey Zabel and Jalen Sundell have watched three Super Bowls together.

On their couch in Fargo, North Dakota.

They were there as roommates, and teammates playing next to each other on the offensive line at North Dakota State University. They won the national championship in the Football Championship Subdivision as Bison.

All this Seahawks season, Sundell has been the team’s first-time full-time starting center one year after Seattle signed him as an undrafted rookie free agent out of NDSU. Zabel, three years younger, has been the stud rookie left tackle and first-round draft choice starting since the first NFL practice in May next to his college roommate. They talked in the preseason how they were hugging and marveling to each other in the tunnel at Lumen Field that leads from the Seahawks locker room onto the field. That was before they played together as pros in their first NFL exhibition game last summer.

Six months, 16 wins in 19 games and the NFC championship later, Zabel and Sundell are going to hug and marvel like they never have in their lives Sunday in the tunnel at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara. They going to take the field together again, start together again, for the Seahawks against the New England Patriots in Super Bowl 60.

This ain’t no exhibition.

“Oh, man. I don’t even know,” Sundell said this week. “Yeah, it’s going to be surreal, for sure.”

This week in San Jose, Zabel was thinking about their couch and the take-out food they had watching each of those previous Super Bowls with Sundell back in Fargo.

“Who would’ve thought: To be sitting in our basement, watching the Super Bowl, to now having the opportunity to go play in one — play next to each other?” Zabel said inside the San Jose Convention Center.

“One of one.”

Who would’ve thought?

Not Zabel. Not Sundell.

“No,” Sundell said, “we never thought about that.” “Oh, man. It’s surreal. I don’t think any of us dreamed of playing in the Super Bowl together. “Starting, that’s beyond our wildest dreams.”

Not a lawn mower

Seattle signed Sundell out of NDSU in 2024 as an undrafted rookie free agent. He won the starting-center job last summer in training camp. He’s crazy smart. He deciphers defenses and coordinating protection calls before the snap of each play to his offensive linemen. He also is supremely athletic. He’s 6 feet 5 and 301 pounds yet smoothly runs like he’s 201 pounds while reaching and blocking linemen, linebackers, even defensive backs.

Zabel, the 18th pick in this year’s draft, has been a standout since his first practice and first game. He is Seattle’s highest-drafted interior offensive lineman since 2001: future Hall of Famer Steve Hutchinson, the legend who scouted Zabel for these Seahawk. Zabel has played every one of the 19 games, including through a knee injury in late November. He has allowed only two sacks in Sam Darnold’s 562 drops back to pass in those 19 games That’s a huge reason Darnold is a Pro Bowl quarterback for this season.

Zabel’s been mowing down opposing defensive linemen, linebackers and safeties all season.

Just don’t ask him to mow the grass.

“He will shovel the snow. But he refuses to mow the lawn,” Sundell said. “So, yeah.

“I had to get on him a lot about mowing the lawn, taking his turn. But the snow, he didn’t mind, for some reason.”

That’s no small duty pick up. The annual snowfall in Fargo is about four feet.

No grass in no yard, in North Dakota or anywhere else inhabited, is four feet high.

Zabel’s and Sundell’s yard at NDSU was not even four inches.

“I hated mowing the grass, especially in our yard. It really didn’t have much grass, to begin with,” Zabel said.

“But shoveling snow was unique. Possibly getting in a snowball fight. Or two. You’re a lot colder, so you don’t sweat so much.

“Yeah, he was, like, our go-to, mowing-in-the-grass-type guy,” Zabel, 23, said of the 26-year-old Sundell. “That’s why I love him as a roommate.”

Zabel flashed a wry smile and chuckled to emphasize the deadpan.

“Oh, he’s top-tier. He kept the house clean,” he said of Sundell. “We had a nice house in college, and it would start turning into more like a college house — until we had a Cleaning Sunday.

Tapping back into NDSU

There is a tradition of excellence for North Dakota State football.

It has nothing to do with the cleanliness of their linemen’s houses.

The Bison have won 10 FCS national championships from 2011-24. They are 10-0 in FCS title games. Before that, NDSU won five Division-II national titles from 1983-90, and lower-division titles before that.

Zabel and Sundell won one national championship as Bison teammates in the 2021 season.

When the Seahawks’ playoffs began early last month, folks were asking Zabel if he was feeling the usual drag rookies get late in their first NFL season, because they aren’t used to playing that many college games that late in a football season. Zabel chuckled and said he’s used to this.

He played in 12 national playoff games in his last three years at North Dakota State.

There have been 55 players from NDSU to play in the NFL, 47 of them drafted, per Pro Football Reference. An even dozen Bison played in the league this season, including veteran quarterback Carson Wentz, Tennessee offensive tackle Dillon Radunz and Green Bay tight end Christian Watson.

They stay in touch while across the NFL. Sundell says he and Zabel text with Bison buddies “every day.”

“Grey and I both, and all of the guys that come out of North Dakota State, we carry that everywhere we go. Trying to do the things the right way that we were taught at North Dakota State,” Sundell said.

“It’s really the qualities and the traits that are needed for success, which are hard work, attention to detail, small things matter. ...You just learn the traits that are required to be successful not even football, but in life.”

John Benton loves the traits that make Bison linemen, specifically his Zabel and Sundell, successful for the Seahawks.

Benton is in his first season as Seattle’s offensive line coach. The 62-year-old has been coaching NFL O-lines since 2003. So, yes, he knows what he wants to what to look for to get in scouting college players.

Benton told The News Tribune Wednesday here at the Super Bowl that North Dakota State’s offensive system is similar to the outside-zone run-blocking scheme and pass-protection ways the Seahawks used this season to set a franchise record scoring points.

“It has some elements of it, yeah,” Benton said. “They, really, have a pretty impressive program from an offensive standpoint. You see that with how many North Dakota State players are out there (in the league).

“You see so many spread offenses in college. And there’s a benefit to that; you are getting much better pass protectors than you used to get. But so many (college) offensive linemen now aren’t playing in a three-point stance, don’t come off the ball at the snap. That’s a big adjustment (in the NFL).”

Benton says of Zabel, Sundell and the North Dakota State offensive linemen “you are seeing what you want. And you make very good evaluations out of offenses like that.

“And they do a very good job of coaching them. You can really see that show up.”

Does Benton have any other guards or centers from North Dakota State he’s looking at to populate Seattle with more Bison?

“Not yet,” he said, laughing. “As soon as this game is over, I’m sure I’ll get my list.” Will it end with Zabel and Sundell Super Bowl champions, on top of the national champions they were at North Dakota State in 2021?

When they look at each other in amazement in that tunnel coming out of the locker room into Levi’s Stadium Sunday, with an estimated 200 million or more people worldwide watching them on television, they will have already won.

“What an unreal experience,” Zabel said. “The world truly comes full circle that this is happening. I’m super-excited.

“It’s going to be one that it might be a little bit longer hug in the tunnel before we run out onto the field, knowing what this game means and how special the moment is going to be.”