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Darnold Breaks His Silence, and the News Is That There’s No News
Sam Darnold spoke to reporters Wednesday for the first time since the confetti fell on February 8, and the most reassuring thing he said was also the most boring. On switching to Brian Fleury, his seventh offensive coordinator in six seasons, Darnold told local reporters, “Thankfully it hasn’t been too much of a transition.” Read that sentence again. A defending champion’s quarterback is telling you nothing has changed. That’s not a shrug. That’s the whole plan.
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Offensive coordinators Darnold will have played for in six NFL seasons. He’s stopped flinching.
Fleury isn’t tearing down the playbook Klint Kubiak left behind when he bolted for Las Vegas. He spent the past seven seasons on Kyle Shanahan’s staff in San Francisco, which means Seattle is running a version of the same Shanahan tree it ran last year. Darnold has lived in this verbiage before. He spent the 2023 season with Fleury in San Francisco, detoured through Minnesota’s Shanahan-adjacent system, then landed here under Kubiak. To him, this is less a new language than a new accent.
The personality fit is the part that actually matters. Darnold described Fleury as “really stoic” and compared him directly to Kubiak, the coordinator who helped him win a ring. He also said the quiet part out loud about how offenses actually work: you build an identity, and it doesn’t always match exactly what the coordinator drew up in the spring. Last year that identity was “keep handing it off if the handoffs are working.” Nobody in this building is eager to mess with that.
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Seventh coordinator in six years, and the headline is that nothing happened. For a team defending a Super Bowl, nothing happening is the entire goal.
For a franchise that has changed playcallers the way most people change phone plans, continuity is a luxury. The roster that won it all is almost entirely intact. The system survived its architect leaving. And the quarterback is bored in the best possible way. Run it forward, indeed.
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Roster
The Last Pick Is Already Making Noise
Keep Reading ↓
Fuller was flagged before the draft as one of the bigger sleepers in the class, a Day 3 dart that landed in exactly the right defense. Macdonald’s secondary chews up zone-heavy corners with instincts, and the early reviews suggest Fuller has them. He’s been on the field in the No. 35 jersey since Day 1, getting reps while the veterans ease in.
None of this means anything in June. Practice-field hype is the cheapest currency in football, and a seventh-rounder turning heads in shorts is a story that dies the second the pads come on. But Seattle’s UDFA-and-late-pick pipeline has a real track record, and a cornerback room that lost Riq Woolen and Coby Bryant could use a cheap answer. File it away. Check back in August.
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AROUND THE COOP
Around the Coop
Today is the last of the three open OTA sessions before mandatory minicamp June 9-11. After this, the cameras and notebooks go dark until the veterans are required to show up. Enjoy your last drip of real football intel before July. Seahawks.com
Darnold also called Fleury’s command and presence a strength, which is QB-speak for “the new guy knows the room won’t follow a coordinator who fumbles the install.” High praise from a man who’s auditioned six of them. NFL.com
Devon Witherspoon’s extension is still the deal everyone’s waiting on, with the corner positioned to reset the market on his next contract. Two sides who know each other’s cards, neither blinking. Training camp is the soft deadline. The clock just isn’t loud yet. Yahoo Sports
NFC WEST SCHADENFREUDE REPORT
RAMS
Puka Nacua keeps insisting his next contract is the last thing on his mind, which is the most thoroughly-considered non-thought in football. He’s making rookie-deal money while the receiver market explodes around him, his deal is being predicted as “record-setting,” and the Garrett trade just drained the drawer he’d be paid out of. Sure, Puka. Haven’t thought about it once.
NINERS
San Francisco was so moved by its own perfect OTA attendance that Kyle Shanahan canceled mandatory minicamp as a reward. There’s just one asterisk: left tackle Trent Williams, the one man who didn’t show, who Shanahan says is “expected next week.” They threw a party for showing up and the guest of honor skipped it.
CARDINALS
The Josh Sweat garage sale lost its best customer. A Packers insider shot down the Green Bay trade buzz, posting it’s “not a thing at this point.” So Arizona keeps the disgruntled edge rusher it overpaid for, the post-June savings window keeps mocking the calendar, and the rebuild keeps idling in the driveway.
SEACHICKENS TRIVIA
Before Russell Wilson rewrote the record book, which Seahawks quarterback held the franchise’s all-time passing yardage mark, and how many Pro Bowls did he make in Seattle?
Tap to Reveal the Answer
Matt Hasselbeck. He left Seattle as the franchise’s all-time leader in passing yards (29,434), completions, attempts, and wins, and earned three Pro Bowl nods. Green Bay traded him to Seattle in 2001 in a pick-swap deal, and the Seahawks got a decade of relevance and an XL trip out of it.
Got a Question Burning a Hole in Your Brain?
Mandatory minicamp, the Witherspoon waiting game, whether a seventh-round corner can actually stick, the team sale that won’t close. Send it our way and The Rooster will answer it with the appropriate blend of analysis and emotional instability. Hit reply or use the submission form.
Darnold's bored, the kid corner's flying around, and nobody had to learn a new language. Quiet June. Take it. Go Hawks. — The Rooster