By Charlie Perlman, NUSports.com
EVANSTON, Ill. – Coming into his first year of college football at Nebraska, Grant Seagren was a 260-pound tight end. Now, he’s a 320-pound starting offensive tackle at Northwestern.
“I look a whole lot different,” Seagren said. “I can't believe I was playing college football looking like that. I look back at clips I have saved on my phone from practice of a set I was really proud of and I’m like ‘man I should delete this right now.’”
The Oakland, Nebraska, native joined the Cornhuskers as a walk-on on an academic scholarship. After redshirting his true freshman season, Seagren played in seven games before transferring to Oklahoma State.
It was with the Cowboys that Seagren began to emerge as an offensive lineman, allowing zero sacks across 403 pass-blocking snaps during the 2025 season.
But that season might have looked very different if not for an unexpected opportunity.
The day before Oklahoma State played then-No. 6 Oregon on the road, one of the Cowboys’ starting offensive tackles was injured during a walkthrough in a hotel ballroom. Seagren was suddenly in line to make his first collegiate start at offensive tackle against one of the top teams in the country.
“We're about to go play a fantastic defensive line,” Seagren said. “They’ve got all these guys that are big names. You look at them on film, and they're really solid and do the job well. It's like ‘Man, can I compete for a whole game? Not just for a drive, but can I get it for a whole game?’”
The answer came over the course of four quarters in front of nearly 60,000 fans.
Seagren finished the game without allowing a sack or quarterback hit and did not commit a penalty. What began as an unexpected opportunity became a defining moment in his development as an offensive lineman.
For Seagren, adapting to the unexpected is something he has learned to embrace, both on and off the football field.
He points to his background in informative speaking and playing multiple sports as a high schooler in Oakland, a town of fewer than 2,000 people. When he wasn’t playing football, Seagren played basketball and track and field. His mother, Janelle, also convinced him to try informative speaking, a type of speech and debate. Those experiences, Seagren said, helped him become more comfortable adjusting when circumstances change.
That adaptability has followed him to Northwestern, where Seagren has found a team that places an emphasis on preparation and relationships beyond football. He also has found an offensive line room that he says values flexibility and being ready for whatever each week brings.
Seagren has noticed that emphasis on preparation throughout the Northwestern program. At some of his previous stops, he said, arriving an hour early to a morning lift meant being the first player there. At Northwestern, it means being one of the first 50 players to arrive.
Dan and Susan Jones Family Head Football Coach David Braun has noticed the work Seagren has put in since arriving in Evanston.
“There's a quiet confidence about Grant that I really like,” Braun said. “There's this internal competitor that doesn't always show on the outside, but there's just this calm, composed, confident competitor that you know you love to see in an offensive lineman.”
That confidence, however, didn’t mean Seagren wasn’t nervous about fitting in when he first arrived at Northwestern.
Joining some of the Wildcats’ other transfers a quarter early, Seagren had to wait to meet many of his new teammates. Despite his nerves, it didn’t take long for him to find his place in the locker room.
Offensive line coach Tim Drevno has seen that same even-keeled approach show up in Seagren’s day-to-day work.
“Grant’s very even keeled,” Drevno said. “He’s got a very strong competitive nature about him and he stays within the moment. Everyone really likes him. He’s a great person and we are very thankful that we have him.”
That ability to stay in the moment is not something Seagren developed alone.
Before there was Grant Seagren, there were Garrett and Wyatt Seagren, his two older brothers. Both were collegiate athletes, one in basketball and one in football, and Seagren credits them with helping shape the work ethic that has carried him through his own career.
“They’re the reason I am where I am today,” Seagren said. “They both work so hard. I wanted to spend time with my brothers, so I'd go with them. I feel that just helped me go a lot further and get to a higher spot than I would have been to start. And even now, I have an expectation of myself because I've seen my brothers play at the levels that they did.”
An interest in computer science is another part of Seagren that exists beyond football. He even built his own computer, comparing the process to the way he approaches challenges on the field.
“It's kind of like once you start rolling with building the whole PC,” Seagren said. “Getting started is the hardest part. And then once you start doing this, you realize, I made this sound way harder in my head than it has to be. Not that a game isn't hard, but you realize it’s still the same game, it’s still a process every time.”
Now, three years removed from his first season at Nebraska, Seagren has arrived at another new stage of his college career: a Big Ten starting offensive tackle at Northwestern.
For all the changes along the way, Seagren isn't looking too far ahead.
“I've been trying to take it one day at a time as much as I can,” Seagren said. “It's really easy to kind of forget that you have a game versus a quality FCS opponent because you're looking at something down the road. I don't really have a specific goal in mind. I just want to try and be better this year than I was last year.”