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Camp Watch
The Super Bowl Sack Was Never the Point
ESPN’s Brady Henderson dropped a Rylie Mills feature this week, and the takeaway is simple: the young defensive lineman is finally, fully healthy, and Seattle thinks it stole a first-round player in the fifth round. That’s not fan-forum optimism. That’s how the building actually feels.
Rewind. Mills tore his ACL late at Notre Dame, and per Henderson the internal read was that a healthy Mills might have gone late in the first or early in the second. Instead he slid to No. 142, and DC Aden Durde pounded the table to get him there. Durde wanted him badly enough to make it a whole thing in the draft room. When your defensive coordinator is willing to spend social capital on a fifth-rounder, you listen.
No. 142
Where Mills fell in the 2025 draft after the ACL scared teams off, a full round-plus below where a healthy grade projected.
Then Mills spent almost his entire rookie season on the shelf, made his debut in Week 15, and by February was dragging an offensive lineman into the backfield for his first NFL sack in Super Bowl LX. Five career snaps at that point. He recorded a sack on one of them. Macdonald reportedly wanted his guys to save the fireworks for August, and Mills went ahead and lit one in the biggest game on the calendar anyway.
The timing matters more than the highlight. This defensive line is old and getting older. Leonard Williams is 32 and in a contract year, Jarran Reed is 33, DeMarcus Lawrence is 34 and briefly flirted with retirement, Dante Fowler is 31. Somebody young has to start eating snaps, and Mills, now at defensive end for Year 2, is the cleanest candidate on the roster to do it.
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He made his statement in February and then said nothing else. That’s the whole story: he let five snaps in the Super Bowl do the talking.
I’ve learned to be careful with February heroes. One great play in one great game is not a season. But the ACL is a year behind him now, the frame is genuinely first-round caliber, and the coaching staff has been telling anyone who’ll listen that this was a steal. If Mills is even 80 percent of the hype, the Darkside doesn’t get older this year. It gets deeper.
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Offense
Fleury Wants Everybody Moving
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The reason this matters is target distribution. The 2025 offense won a title leaning hard on JSN, who walked away with Offensive Player of the Year. That works right up until a defense decides to make someone else beat them. Fleury’s version has a natural path to feeding Rashid Shaheed, AJ Barner, and Cooper Kupp more, while giving Jadarian Price cleaner runways in the run game.
None of this is a teardown. Darnold said back in the spring the transition has been minimal, and he means it as a compliment. You don’t blow up an offense that just scored 29 in the Super Bowl. You just teach it a few new dance moves and see who gets open.
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AROUND THE COOP
Around the Coop
The sale picture sharpened into three groups: Grousbeck and Mittal (Celtics alternate governors), Vinod Khosla, and Todd Boehly. Three billionaires walked in the room and the reporting still describes the interest as soft. That tells you exactly how much the Washington tax situation spooked the buyer pool. Heavy
SI’s Eva Geitheim tagged Rashid Shaheed and Byron Murphy II as 2026 breakout candidates. A downfield burner who already scored three return touchdowns and an interior wrecking ball on the best D-line in football. “Breakout” might be underselling both. Central Oregon Daily
Lumen Field is hosting a World Cup 2026 quarterfinal with the USA men chasing a berth on the same turf the Seahawks defend every fall. The building was loud enough to rattle Trey McBride. Now it gets to rattle Belgium. Field Gulls
NFC WEST SCHADENFREUDE REPORT
NINERS
Brandon Aiyuk spent weeks demanding the 49ers cut him loose so he could go join Jayden Daniels in Washington. This week the bill arrived. Per NBC Bay Area’s Matt Maiocco, San Francisco voided his 2026 and 2027 guarantees and is now expected to chase back up to $18.4 million it already paid him for defaulting on the deal. He said he didn’t care how much money he had to give up to leave. Turns out the 49ers took him literally.
CARDINALS
Trey McBride went on Bussin’ With The Boys, got asked which NFC West team he hates most, and picked us. His words: Seattle is “a tough place to play” and the defense is “a bunch of shit talkers” on “a really good team.” That’s not a diss, Trey. That’s a scouting report you filed on yourself. When the best tight end in your division admits our building breaks him, we’re just going to go ahead and take the compliment.
SEACHICKENS TRIVIA
This running back was a fourth-round pick out of tiny Ferrum College in 1990, made three straight Pro Bowls, and held the Seahawks’ career rushing record until Shaun Alexander broke it in 2005. Who is he?
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Chris Warren. He piled up 6,706 rushing yards and 44 touchdowns across eight seasons in Seattle before signing with Dallas in 1998, and his franchise rushing mark stood for seven years after he left.
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Twenty-three days until the pads come on. Somebody's about to make five snaps count. — The Rooster