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Training Camp
The Defending Champs Are First in Line
Football is back, and it starts here. The Seahawks rookies report to the Virginia Mason Athletic Center today, July 17, the earliest reporting date of any team in the NFL. The defending Super Bowl champions get to open the entire 2026 camp calendar, with the 49ers a day behind them and everyone else filing in before the leaguewide veteran deadline of July 28.
July 17
Seattle’s rookie report date, the earliest of any NFL team; veterans follow July 24 and the first practice is July 25.
The kids get the building to themselves for a full week. Veterans don’t report until July 24, and the first full-squad practice is July 25. That extra week is the point: a running back who never started a college game and a fistful of seventh-round dice rolls get seven days to figure out where the bathrooms are before the guys with rings show up and the real thing starts.
Jadarian Price is the headliner, and the runway in front of him keeps getting longer. Emanuel Wilson and George Holani are healthy behind him, but Zach Charbonnet is still working back from a January ACL and a fast start in camp is how Price turns “projected starter” into “actual starter.” Behind him, second-rounder Bud Clark and third-rounder Julian Neal are the two rookies with the clearest path to defensive snaps, and a scrum of seventh-rounders in Deven Eastern, Andre Fuller, and Michael Dansby are playing for their professional lives.
There’s something a little funny about being the team that shows up before everyone else. Being the first team in the building is a nice perk when you won the last game that mattered. It’s a lot less charming when you’re the first team everyone’s trying to beat.
SOURCES →
AROUND THE COOP
Around the Coop
The next installment of Seahawks.com’s camp-storyline series dropped overnight on Sam Darnold’s encore. Fair enough. The most reassuring thing about a Super Bowl quarterback’s offseason is that the biggest question anyone can think to ask is “so, now what?” Seahawks.com
Field Gulls flagged Nehemiah Pritchett as one of its roster-bubble names to watch now that Seattle spent three of eight draft picks on the secondary. Nothing sharpens a third-year corner’s focus like watching the front office draft his job description four separate times. Field Gulls
SI pegged Deven Eastern, Andre Fuller, and Michael Dansby as the long shots reporting today. Dansby already made noise with a few OTA picks. The catch: this is the deepest DB room in the building, and “early standout” and “final 53” are separated by about forty players who cost more. SI
NFC WEST SCHADENFREUDE REPORT
RAMS
ESPN’s annual poll of coaches, scouts, and executives ranked Matthew Stafford the No. 3 quarterback in football, up from sixth a year ago after his MVP season. Genuinely earned. It’s also the reigning MVP finishing third at his own position, which tells you exactly how much runway the league thinks a 38-year-old has left. The Rams built a Super-Bowl-or-bust roster around a clock they can’t rank and can’t stop.
NINERS
San Francisco opens camp July 26 with Mike Evans headlining a rebuilt receiver room, a first-year defensive coordinator, and Brandon Aiyuk’s situation still unresolved and hanging over the building. They rebuilt half the roster and the loudest storyline is still the guy they haven’t figured out what to do with. Some things you just carry into camp like a bad knee.
CARDINALS
Arizona reports July 22 with a genuine mystery under center: Jacoby Brissett is penciled in as the starter, but he’s in a contract dispute, and the beat is openly asking how many games he starts before it’s Gardner Minshew or rookie Carson Beck. Nothing says stable franchise like a starting-quarterback holdout you can see coming from the parking lot.
SEACHICKENS TRIVIA
This seventh-round pick out of Arizona State made the Seahawks roster as a rookie in 1978, and his 41 interceptions rank third in franchise history behind only Dave Brown and Eugene Robinson. In 1981 he led the AFC with 10 picks while starting alongside a rookie Kenny Easley. Who is he?
Tap to Reveal the Answer
John Harris. He started 111 of 119 games across eight seasons in Seattle, returned two of those 41 interceptions for touchdowns, and his 10-pick 1981 season remains one of the great ballhawk years in franchise history.
Got a Question for The Mailbag?
Camp is nine days from full swing and the takes are about to get loud. Send me your questions about the roster, the rookies, or which bubble player you’re irrationally attached to, and I’ll answer the best ones in an upcoming issue.
The kids are in the building. The rest of the league is still hitting snooze. — The Rooster