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Camp Preview
Darnold’s on His Seventh OC and Somehow Nobody’s Worried
Six days from camp, the Seahawks rolled out their Sam Darnold storyline, and the headline number is genuinely absurd: Brian Fleury is the seventh offensive coordinator Darnold has played for in six seasons. For any other quarterback that’s a warning label. Darnold just won a Super Bowl in the middle of that carousel, so the warning label reads more like a resume.
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Offensive coordinators Sam Darnold has played for in six NFL seasons. Fleury is the newest.
The reason nobody’s sweating it is that this isn’t a teardown. Fleury came over from San Francisco, but he’s working from the same Shanahan-tree roots Klint Kubiak brought, so the wide-zone, play-action engine stays intact. Darnold told Seahawks.com it’s mostly familiar verbiage with a few new touches. “It’s a lot of the same stuff,” he said, crediting Fleury’s years in San Francisco for the wrinkles they’re folding in. Macdonald put it more bluntly: it’s this year’s version of last year’s offense.
That’s the whole trick. Kubiak left to go be the Raiders’ head coach, which is the kind of departure that usually blows up an offense. Seattle replaced him with a coach who speaks the same dialect, kept the personnel, and asked Darnold to add a little rather than relearn everything. Continuity is the least exciting word in football and it’s the reason this room feels calm.
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Continuity is the least exciting word in football and it’s the reason this room feels calm.
Behind him, Drew Lock is back as the No. 2, a veteran with real starting reps who is exactly the kind of backup you want on a team that isn’t planning to need one. If the scariest thing about the quarterback room is that the offense might look slightly different in the red zone, that’s not a problem. That’s a roster that’s already figured out the hard part.
SOURCES →
Rookies
The Rookie Class Has Three Real Jobs to Chase
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Clark is the one I keep circling. A second-round safety out of TCU with 15 college interceptions who grew up patterning his game after Kam Chancellor, he walked in and told anyone who’d listen that Kam “always brought the pop.” That’s the correct answer on the entrance exam. Whether he unseats Ty Okada for the open starting spot is the defense’s one genuinely undecided job.
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Career interceptions for rookie safety Bud Clark across four seasons at TCU.
None of these are guarantees, and that’s fine. A Super Bowl roster doesn’t hand rookies anything. But the fact that a defending champion drafted three guys who all have a realistic runway to playing time is the kind of problem every other team in the division would sign up for.
SOURCES →
AROUND THE COOP
Around the Coop
Josh Jones, who sat out every OTA and minicamp rep with a knee issue, told NFL reporter Aaron Wilson he expects to be full-go for the start of camp. Which quietly makes Bobby Hart’s path to the 53 a lot narrower than it was a month ago. Field Gulls
NFL owners are set to vote on the Khosla group’s purchase on August 26 in Atlanta, closing an NFL-record deal reported at $9.6 billion. For the largest price ever paid for a football team, you’d hope somebody remembers to bring the pen. ESPN
Jaxon Smith-Njigba’s camp storyline dropped with the only question worth asking after he broke the franchise single-season receiving record: what does he do for an encore? He’s 23, locked up through 2031, and HBO’s cameras are about to find out. Seahawks.com
NFC WEST SCHADENFREUDE REPORT
RAMS
The NFL’s NFC West camp preview named Los Angeles the team that would win the offseason trophy if one existed, then reminded everyone the Rams shocked the league by drafting Alabama QB Ty Simpson 13th overall. They have a reigning MVP in Matthew Stafford who’s 38, so naturally the plan is to spend a first-round pick on the guy who plays after the MVP is done. All-in has never looked so much like planning the funeral.
NINERS
San Francisco’s rookies reported this week and the local framing has quietly shifted: the big camp question is no longer whether the offense gets its old form back, but whether it can move forward at all around a receiver room now leaning on Mike Evans and Ricky Pearsall. When the goal drops from “win it back” to “survive without him,” you’ve already lost the argument.
CARDINALS
The NFC West preview opened Arizona’s section with a clean summary of the rebuild: Kyler Murray’s gone, Jonathan Gannon’s gone, and the Week 1 starter is probably Jacoby Brissett, maybe Gardner Minshew, maybe rookie Carson Beck. Seven years of Murray, a $230 million contract they couldn’t trade, and the payoff is a training-camp mystery at quarterback. The desert is rebuilding by subtraction.
SEACHICKENS TRIVIA
This bruising running back was Seattle’s final pick of the 2017 draft, taken 249th overall in the seventh round, yet went on to post back-to-back 1,000-yard rushing seasons in 2018 and 2019 before a neck injury cut his career short. Who is he?
Tap to Reveal the Answer
Chris Carson. He piled up 3,502 rushing yards across just 49 games and gave Seattle elite production from the last pick they made that year, until a neck injury four games into 2021 ended it far too early.
Got a Question for the Mailbag?
Camp opens in six days and the questions are stacking up faster than the depth chart. Fire yours at the mailbag and I’ll answer the best one, honestly, in my own slightly over-caffeinated way. No question too small, no take too unhinged.
Six days out, and the most dangerous thing about this offense is how little it needs to change. — The Rooster