Don't Look at My Team

Emanuel Wilson — RB, SEA (2026)

Verdict

AVOID (medium confidence) at an undrafted price — do not spend a roster spot; this is a waiver-watch name at best. Wilson is 4th on Seattle's RB depth chart, was passed at June minicamp by both R1 rookie Jadarian Price and George Holani ("Holani and Price were splitting first-team duties" — SI Seahawks, 2026-06-15), and local coverage puts him on the 53-man bubble (SI, 2026-06-15; analyst Hugh Millen argued he may not make the roster — mynorthwest via search, 2026-07-07). He fails every deep-pool pedigree screen: 2023 UDFA, Division-II production at age 23, year 4, age 27, career-high 17 targets — no capital, no breakout window, no receiving path. The residual market interest is anchored to a dead world: the April "cheapest starting RB in the league" framing (PFF's Buday via SI, 2026-04-09) predates Seattle spending pick 32 on Price and predates minicamp; the depth chart has since resolved against Wilson twice. He is the rb.md §7 low-standalone/low-contingent quadrant — roster clog — and he fails the handcuff three-factor test on succession clarity (he'd need to leapfrog Holani AND survive Charbonnet's ~October return just to be the backup). AVOID here is about risk (roster spot, not price): the realistic best case is a TD-vulture package on a great offense, which is undraftable in a 12-team/6-bench league.

Bull case

The environment is the best he'll ever touch: a 10.5-win, run-tilted champion offense behind a top-10 run-blocking line, with a genuinely open goal-line role until Charbonnet returns — if Wilson wins short-yardage in camp, a 5–7 TD vulture season is live (team profile, 2026-07-07).
The arrow inside his role pointed up two straight years: backfield opportunity share 22.6% → 30.6%, weighted opps 8.1 → 9.9/g, and GB trusted him with 35% of team carries weeks 11–18 of 2025 (CSVs + pbp, computed 2026-07-07); PFF graded him 82.9 overall in 2024 and 73.9 rushing in 2025 (SI, 2026-04-09).
Low mileage for 27 (~272 career REG touches) and a power profile (5'10", 226) that ages at the goal line better than in space — if he makes the team, the job he'd hold is the one his body is built to keep.

Bear case

He's losing the camp battle he was signed to win: Price (R1 capital) and Holani split first-team reps at minicamp while Wilson watched; beat coverage explicitly frames him as a bubble player who may not make the 53 (SI Seahawks, 2026-06-15; mynorthwest/Millen). A day-3-priced veteran behind fresh R1 capital is "one bad week from committee" — and he's not even in the committee yet.
Zero receiving profile in the lowest-RB-target-share system in the data: career-high 17 targets, 3.7% target share, 30% route-participation proxy — in an offense that gave RBs 13.6% of targets. His floor in any negative script is literally zero, and full PPR (assumed) maximally punishes that.
The 2025 tape argues the 2024 efficiency was the outlier: RYOE fell from +0.73 to −0.21/att, success rate 50.5% → 44.0%, and one run of 15+ yards on 125 carries (0.8% breakaway). A 27-year-old D2 UDFA whose burst indicators just cratered is the decline sequence (rb.md §11) starting from a backup baseline.

Projection & comps

Outcome	PPR pts	Scenario
Floor (20th pct)	3	Cut in August or inactive/special-teams only; Charbonnet returns Oct, Wilson buried or waived
Median (50th pct)	45	Makes the 53 as RB4/short-yardage piece: ~50 carries, ~210 yds, ~2 rush TD (xTD from partial inside-5 share, Sept–Oct), ~5 rec / 35 yds
Ceiling (80th pct)	100	Wins the goal-line/short-yardage package while Charbonnet rehabs and keeps a slice after: ~105 carries, ~430 yds, ~6 TD, ~10 rec / 70 yds

Build inputs: SEA ~28.5 rush att/g on a −6.8% PROE, 10.5-win-total offense (team profile, 2026-07-07); SEA threw on only 42.5% of inside-10 plays in 2025 (24th) — real goal-line run equity for whoever owns the package. TDs anchored to projected inside-5 share (contested with Price early, Charbonnet on return), not to any prior TD total. A true 95th-percentile branch (Price injury in camp → Wilson in an early-season committee lead) exists above the ceiling but requires two depth-chart accidents.

Games-played risk: high — driven by roster-cut and healthy-scratch risk, not injury (no injury flags; Sleeper injury_status null, 2026-07-07).

Comps (role-based sanity checks — approximate PPR finishes from memory, UNVERIFIED exact totals): Jordan Mason 2023 SF (RB3 power back, ~45 PPR) ≈ the median; Latavius Murray 2023 BUF (veteran short-yardage committee piece, ~65 PPR) ≈ 65th pct; A.J. Dillon 2023 GB / D'Onta Foreman 2023 CHI (power back who inherited real committee volume, ~90–105 PPR) ≈ the ceiling. No external projection file exists in data/projections/ to check against (directory absent, 2026-07-07).

Usage profile (2025 GB, REG, 17 g — the demonstrated NFL role)

Metric	2025 value	Band	Source
Snap share	31.1% avg (range 4–71%; 71% wk 11 with Jacobs out)	Concern (<40%)	snap_counts.csv 2025, pulled 2026-07-07
Opportunity share (of GB RB backfield)	30.6% (125 car + 17 tgt of 386+78) — up from 22.6% in 2024	Concern (<45%)	rushing/receiving.csv 2025 & 2024, computed 2026-07-07
Weighted opportunities /g	9.9 (8.1 in 2024)	Concern (<13)	same
High-value touches /g	1.5 (17 tgt + 8 inside-10 carries ÷ 17)	Concern (<2.5)	receiving.csv + nflverse pbp REG, computed 2026-07-07
Inside-10 / inside-5 carry share (team)	8/45 (17.8%) · 4/27 (14.8%) — Jacobs owned the goal line	Concern (<20%)	nflverse pbp 2025 REG, computed 2026-07-07
Third-down snap share	27.1% (61/225)	Concern (<25–40 line)	participation.csv × pbp join, computed 2026-07-07
Route participation (on-field on dropbacks, proxy)	30.0% (166/554)	Concern (<40%)	same
Targets /g · target share	1.0 · 3.7% (career high)	Concern (<1.5)	receiving.csv 2025
Expected PPG (xFP)	UNVERIFIED (no provider export on hand); actual 5.6 PPG (94.5 PPR/17)	—	receiving/rushing.csv 2025

Efficiency (the back vs the line):

Metric	2024	2025	Read
RYOE /att (NGS)	+0.73 (elite band)	−0.21 (concern band)	ngs_rushing.csv 2024/2025 — one good, one bad backup-sized sample; per scoring-framework §3 an efficiency change needs two seasons, so net read = average, high variance
Rush success rate	50.5%	44.0%	nflverse pbp REG, computed 2026-07-07
YPC	4.87	3.97	rushing.csv
Breakaway (15+ yd runs ÷ att)	6.8% (7/103)	0.8% (1/125)	pbp REG — 2025 ceiling indicator effectively zero
8+ box rate faced	14.6%	28.0%	ngs_rushing.csv — heavy-box drag rose; some 2025 decline is context
MTF /touch · YAC /att	UNVERIFIED (no PFF/FP export in data/raw/) — PFF graded him 73.9 rushing in 2025, 82.9 overall in 2024 (Buday via SI, 2026-04-09)
Pass-pro grade	UNVERIFIED — 27.1% third-down on-field rate suggests GB trusted him situationally, not as the passing-down back

Game-script note (2025 GB): on-field rate was actually *higher* trailing 7+ (35.2%) than leading 7+ (19.9%) — he was the breather/two-minute-adjacent backup behind Jacobs, not a closer. In Seattle that pattern is irrelevant: the role, if any, is short-yardage/positive-script, i.e., script-fragile (participation × pbp, computed 2026-07-07).

Pedigree screens (deep-pool mandate)

Draft capital: none. 2023 UDFA — signed by Denver 2023-05-12, released after 3 days, signed by GB 2023-05-22 (Wikipedia, as-of 2026-06-09). Per prospect-pedigree §1, UDFA screens require *demonstrated NFL usage*; his demonstrated usage is a 23–31% snap backup.
College: Division II — Johnson C. Smith (2018–19), Fort Valley State (2020–22); best season 209/1,371/17 in 10 games in 2022 at age 23 (Wikipedia, as-of 2026-06-09). Sub-FCS competition discount applies; no age-adjusted signal; college receiving résumé does not indicate a three-down profile.
Athletic testing: UNVERIFIED (no combine/RAS figure on hand).
Breakout windows: closed. Year 4, age 27 (b. 1999-05-08 — Sleeper, 2026-07-07). The year-2 leap and post-hype screens don't apply (no capital, no crashed ADP — there was never an ADP).
Mileage: genuinely low — ~272 career REG touches (18 in 2023 + 114 in 2024 + 140 in 2025; stats CSVs) plus minimal playoff work. This is the one pedigree positive: no wear. But at 27 he sits *at* the cliff age with the low-mileage discount already the only thing keeping him employable.
Contract: 1 yr, up to $2.1M (ESPN, 2026-03-12) — the §9 "committee/insurance" signal exactly; the team told us the plan, and GM John Schneider framed him as "a heavy runner… 230-pound guy with great feet" on a "come prove it" deal (mynorthwest, 2026-03-12).

Context (from data/team-profiles/SEA.md, built/verified 2026-07-07)

Team: defending Super Bowl champions; 10.5 Vegas win total (DK via CBS, 2026-07-01) → positive-script lean; ~61 plays/g, ~53% pass, ~28.5 rush att/g. Elite run environment: RBWR 8th (73%), Zabel the No. 1 interior run-blocker by RBWR (ESPN, 2026-01-06), 5/5 OL returning.
Play-caller: Brian Fleury, first-time caller, explicit Kubiak-continuation mandate — run-tilted, wide-zone Shanahan family with duo/short-yardage wrinkles; RB target share just 13.6% in this system (2025, receiving.csv) — even the backfield's receiving pie is small, and Wilson has never eaten from it anywhere.
Backfield: Charbonnet (ACL 2026-01-17, surgery 2026-02-20, PUP expected, mid-Oct earliest return but "ahead of schedule" — ESPN/Field Gulls/SI, June–July 2026) → Jadarian Price (R1, No. 32) framed as Walker's-role successor → George Holani, splitting first-team reps with Price at minicamp (SI, 2026-06-15) → Wilson → McIntosh (ACL, PUP candidate). RotoWire/Ourlads depth charts (fetched 2026-07-07) concur on that order.
Scheme fit: wide zone is not his diet — his claim is the duo/short-yardage/goal-line package (team profile; Schneider's "heavy runner" framing). That package exists on this team (42.5% inside-10 pass rate, 24th), which is the entire remaining thesis.

Tripwires (re-run on any)

Wilson is waived/cut in August → eval dead; remove from all watchlists (this is the modal bad branch — treat as confirmation, not news).
Camp/preseason reports give Wilson the first-team goal-line/short-yardage package → upgrade to deep-league watchlist / last-round dart in TD-heavy formats (still not a 12-team draft pick on its own).
Jadarian Price injury, or Holani cut/injured, before Week 1 → path to early-season committee work opens; re-run with a real carry share.
Charbonnet setback pushing activation past November (late-July PUP checkup is the watch item per the team profile) → contingent value rises one notch.
ADP appears inside the top 180 anywhere → the free-price premise of this verdict is void; re-judge.

Sources

data/stats/2025/ and data/stats/2024/ and data/stats/2023/: rushing.csv, receiving.csv, snap_counts.csv, ngs_rushing.csv, participation.csv (nflverse via nflreadpy, pulled 2026-07-07). Derived tables REG-only.
nflverse play-by-play 2024–2025 REG via nflreadpy, computed 2026-07-07: inside-10/inside-5 carries and team shares, success rate, 15+ yd runs, score-state on-field splits (participation × pbp join), third-down snaps, weeks 11–18 carry split.
data/adp/adp_ffc_2026-07-07.csv (ffc-ppr, 2026-07-07): Wilson blank/undrafted; Price 73.2; Charbonnet 149.5. data/raw/sleeper/players_2026-07-07.json: age 27, b. 1999-05-08, Fort Valley State, years_exp 3, 5'10"/226, SEA depth_chart_order 3, search_rank ~161, injury_status null.
data/team-profiles/SEA.md (built + verification rebuild 2026-07-07): coaching, scheme, OL, win total, backfield hierarchy, vacated touches, Wilson signing terms.
SI Seahawks: "Seahawks May Already Be Regretting Emanuel Wilson Signing" (2026-06-15 — minicamp first-team split Price/Holani, roster bubble); "Emanuel Wilson Might Be the NFL's Best Value Starting RB in 2026" (2026-04-09, pre-draft — PFF grades 73.9/82.9, Buday "cheapest starting RB" quote).
mynorthwest.com: "What Seahawks GM said about new RB Emanuel Wilson" (2026-03-12) — Schneider "heavy runner," "come prove it" framing.
Wikipedia, "Emanuel Wilson (American football)" (as-of 2026-06-09): UDFA 2023 (DEN 3 days → GB), Johnson C. Smith 2018–19 / Fort Valley State 2020–22, 2022 season 209/1,371/17 in 10 g.
ESPN (2026-03-12): SEA signing, 1 yr/up to $2.1M. Web search corroboration of roster status and Millen criticism fetched 2026-07-07.
UNVERIFIED: MTF/touch, YAC/att, pass-block grade/pressure rate (no PFF/FantasyPoints export in data/raw/), xFP, RAS/athletic testing, exact comp-season PPR totals (flagged approximate).