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Training Camp
The Summer Schedule Is Set, and It Ends With Cameras in the Hallway
The pieces of the loudest offseason this building has ever hosted are now all on the calendar. Camp opens July 25 at the VMAC, the Seahawks confirmed nine public practices running through August 13, and they’ll throw the annual Football Fest at Lumen Field on August 8. Registration for all of it opened back on June 16, first come, first served.
Then comes the part nobody here has done before. HBO’s Hard Knocks debuts August 11, and Seattle is the first reigning Super Bowl champion the show has ever followed. The cameras will catch a joint practice with the Titans on August 21 in Nashville, two days before the teams meet in the preseason. Cam Ward’s young Tennessee team versus a defending champ is a fun contrast to script. Less fun if you’re the one being filmed deciding who makes the 53.
Aug 11
Hard Knocks debuts — the first time the series has ever followed a defending Super Bowl champion.
This is the first camp anyone in the building will run as a champion, and that’s the whole tension. There’s a Witherspoon extension hanging over it, a right guard battle between Anthony Bradford and Beau Stephens, and recovery timelines for Zach Charbonnet and Tory Horton that everyone is squinting at. All of it now happens with a documentary crew in the room. Candor is going to be a strategy decision.
The preseason itself is unglamorous and useful: Cowboys at home August 15, at Tennessee August 23, at Kansas City August 28, all 5 p.m. kicks. The KC trip doubles as a Lumen preview of Walker’s Week 7 return, just on the wrong field. Twenty-six days until the gates of the VMAC actually open. Enjoy the quiet while it lasts, because it doesn’t last.
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All of it now happens with a documentary crew in the room. Candor is going to be a strategy decision.
SOURCES →
Offseason
JSN Spent the Weekend Selling Watches in Paris
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This is what $42.15 million a year buys: the freedom to fly to France and put your initials on a timepiece in late June. He earned it. The man reset the entire receiver market in March, signed through 2031, and is allowed exactly one Parisian flex before he reports back to Renton to get filmed catching passes for HBO.
The watch is a fitting prop, honestly. JSN’s whole offseason has been about time: a contract that locks down half a decade, a champion roster trying to make the window stay open, and a camp clock now ticking down toward July 25. Wear it in good health. Just don’t be late to the first walkthrough.
SOURCES →
AROUND THE COOP
Around the Coop
The Witherspoon talks still haven’t produced a deal, and Dave Wyman’s prescription remains the simplest one floating around: pay him the corner market and stop overthinking it. Two years of team control left, training camp as the soft deadline. The number isn’t the problem. The staring contest is. Heavy
Per SI, Seattle has just under $25.5 million in 2026 cap space, 12th-most in the league. Plenty to do business with, not so much that Schneider can be careless with it. Every dollar promised to Witherspoon is a dollar not available for the next guy. The cap is a blanket. Somebody’s feet always end up sticking out. SI
The Titans joint practice in Nashville on August 21 is now officially a Hard Knocks set piece, two days before the preseason game. A defending champion practicing against a second-year Cam Ward team makes for a tidy storyline. The cameras will love it. The coaches will tolerate it. Yahoo Sports
NFC WEST SCHADENFREUDE REPORT
NINERS
Brandon Aiyuk has decided that if the 49ers won’t trade him, he’ll embarrass them into it. In a YouTube video over the weekend he reportedly said he fired his former agent and called general manager John Lynch and head coach Kyle Shanahan “weirdos” in an NSFW rant, all to force his way to Washington and his buddy Jayden Daniels. A former All-Pro is torching his own trade value in real time on social media, and San Francisco still hasn’t blinked. They wanted drama in the building. They got a one-man reality show, and the budget is his Instagram data plan.
SEACHICKENS TRIVIA
In 1997 Seattle traded away four draft picks to Atlanta to move up to the No. 3 overall slot and select this cornerback, then the highest a corner had ever been drafted. He made the Pro Bowl the next season. Who is he?
Tap to Reveal the Answer
Shawn Springs. The Ohio State product cost Seattle its first, second, third, and fourth-round picks to move up for him, and he rewarded the gamble with a Pro Bowl nod in 1998 on his way to a 13-year NFL career.
THE GOLDEN EGG
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This week’s egg goes to a patch of grass. In 26 days the VMAC stops being the quietest building in the NFL and becomes the busiest, with nine public practices, a Hard Knocks crew, a renovation in progress, and the first training camp this organization has ever opened as a defending champion. Every storyline of the summer, the Witherspoon deal, the right guard battle, the Charbonnet and Horton recoveries, runs through this field. It has done nothing yet. It’s about to do everything. Soak in the silence, old friend. They’re coming for you July 25.
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Public Practices
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Days Until Camp
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Camp as Champs
Got a question for The Rooster?
Camp questions, cap math, Hard Knocks predictions, or your unfiltered take on who survives the 53-man cut. Send it in and I’ll answer the best ones, honestly and probably too bluntly.
Twenty-six days of quiet left. The cameras don't do quiet, so use it. — The Rooster