The Herald’s 2025 Football Defensive Player of the Year: Jack Sievers

Published 7:30 am Wednesday, December 31, 2025

EVERETT — Archbishop Murphy High School football player Jack Sievers will soon head east to play tight end at the University of Wisconsin. While he delivered plenty of damage to rival defenses on the way to a Wildcats Class 2A state championship, that’s not necessarily what kept opposing high school coaches up at night.

Sievers, a dominant two-way player, wrecked offenses all season long from his defensive end spot during Archbishop Murphy’s perfect 13-0 season. He compiled 14 sacks, 32 tackles for loss and four forced fumbles on his way to being named The Herald’s All-Area Defensive Player of the Year.

“He plays with an intensity that I haven’t seen maybe ever,” said Archbishop Murphy head coach Joe Cronin, who has served as an assistant coach at powerhouse programs, including Lake Stevens and O’Dea. “He refuses to lose.”

Also a contributor to the Wildcats’ run-dominated Wing-T offense, Sievers led a defense that allowed 9.9 points per game. He routinely batted down quarterbacks’ passes while often forced to fight through double teams as opposing offenses tried to limit his wrath.

It was a dominant run that seemed highly unlikely at one point. Though the 2025 season seems made for a storybook, the path to a championship started on shaky ground.

Sievers, a lacrosse and basketball player before donning a football helmet in eighth grade, got a heaping serving of losing his freshman year, when the Wildcats finished 0-8.

He had moments of doubt, wondering where the program was headed and if he should transfer to Everett H.S., where family on his mother’s side had attended for generations. Childhood friends and even family members asked things like, ‘You passed on attending Everett for that?”

A powerhouse program during its first 15 years of football, Archbishop Murphy’s program slipped into the outhouse of prep sports as the losses mounted. The school’s attendance dipped during the COVID-19 pandemic, and most students found activities away from Archbishop Murphy’s Terry Ennis Stadium to entertain themselves on Friday nights. Watching the football team wasn’t considered cool, and playing on it wasn’t much fun, either.

“That freshman year, the culture and the team we had — I’ll just call it a learning experience,” Sievers said. “It was also pivotal in the part it played. It showed our team what bad culture was like, so we had an actual tangible thing that we had been through to know what not to do. I would have not in a million years thought that we’d be where we were that Saturday at Husky Stadium.”

That was the day Sievers held the Class 2A state championship trophy, won by the Wildcats, 35-20, over Tumwater on Dec. 6 to complete a quick rise from the bottom of the Northwest 2A Conference football standings.

After Sievers’ freshman year, Cronin was hired to right the ship on a path back toward winning a ‘ship. Archbishop Murphy, which won state titles in 2002, 2003 and 2016, went 6-4 in Cronin’s 2023 inaugural season and advanced to the state semifinals a year later during a 10-2 season before Sievers capped off his senior year as a state champion.

Cronin said Sievers’ selflessness provided a strong example for fellow Wildcats.

“He doesn’t care if he catches the ball. He doesn’t care if he gets sacks,” Cronin said. “He just will do anything it takes as a teammate to win. He’s the hardest worker on the field. He watches a ton of film. He does all those intangibles that I think make him great as well.”

Sievers’ ferocity on a dominant defensive line was a big part of the rise from 0-8. The Wildcats allowed just 6.5 points per game in conference play in 2025 and outscored postseason opponents by an average of 48-15. Teams often ran plays away from Sievers’ side of the ball, taking their chances on the other end.

“He is just a wrecking ball,” said Wildcats receiver/safety Henry Gabalis, who will play tight end at the University of Arizona. “The other team would hike the ball, and I’d look at my receiver that I (was covering) or my zone, and the next thing you know, the play is called ead. I look back there, and it’s Jack. Every play, he would come in there and do his job, and make my job so much easier.”

Sievers, also a standout basketball player and track athlete, will head to Madison, Wisconsin in a few days to begin his college football career as an early enrollee. He said he’ll keep an open mind about playing either offense or defense in college. Offensive coaches were drawn to Sievers’ freakish athletic ability. Currently checking in at 6-4, 238 pounds, Sievers has run an electronically-timed 40-yard dash in 4.47 seconds.

That time would have been the best among tight ends who ran the 40 at the 2025 NFL combine.

The traits for a football recruit rated as a high three-star by some recruiting services and a four-star by others, did not come out of the blue. His father, Pat Sievers, played strong safety at Eastern Washington University. His mother, Angie (Cummins) Sievers, was an Olympic medalist and world champion rower.

Their calming influences helped Jack make it through challenges during his own youth sports experiences.

“I got a lot of advice from my parents about some hard seasons they had in high school, and what it was like to stick through,” he said. “The sport is kind of losing that. I’m glad I stuck with it and listened to them.”