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Camp Hasn’t Started and Eastern’s Already Watching It
The Seahawks placed rookie defensive tackle Deven Eastern on the physically unable to perform list as rookies reported Friday, and for a seventh-round pick that’s about as unwelcome a way to begin an NFL career as exists. Eastern, the 242nd overall selection out of Minnesota, has already missed chunks of OTAs and minicamp with what the team is only calling an unspecified injury. Now he opens camp on the shelf too.
242nd
Eastern’s draft slot — the fourth-to-last pick of the 2026 draft, which is a tough place to be missing reps from.
Here’s the part that matters: the camp PUP list is the forgiving version. Unlike the regular-season PUP, which forces a player to miss at least the first four games, a rookie on the training-camp PUP can be activated the moment he’s cleared. So this isn’t a season-ending sentence. It’s a clock, and it’s ticking against a guy who was already going to have to claw his way onto the roster.
SI framed the ripple effect well: Eastern was probably ticketed for the practice squad anyway, so his absence quietly opens a spot there for someone else to grab. That’s the cold arithmetic of a loaded defensive front. When Leonard Williams, Byron Murphy II, and Jarran Reed are all back, a seventh-rounder needs every rep he can get just to be seen. Missing the whole offseason means the coaches are evaluating him on memory and draft grades, not on the field.
I’m not writing him off. Three months of rehab isn’t a verdict. But the roster around Eastern got too good for comfort, the way it did for Christian Haynes on the other side of the ball, and the surest way to lose a camp battle is to not be at camp.
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Analysis
The Backfield Is a Blank Page and Everyone Knows It
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First-round pick Jadarian Price is the headliner, with George Holani and Emanuel Wilson pegged as reasonably safe bets to round out the 53. But if the team wants a fourth back while Charbonnet rehabs, and it probably will, there’s an actual opening for a preseason standout to run into. That’s the kind of door that doesn’t get left ajar in most camps around this team.
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A year ago the depth chart wrote itself. This time the reps are genuinely up for grabs, and that’s the most interesting the backfield has looked since the day they drafted Walker.
What makes this fun is how little of it is settled. A year ago the depth chart wrote itself. This time the reps are genuinely up for grabs, and HBO’s cameras will be there to catch whoever seizes them. If you’re a fringe back with good vision and a preseason to prove it, this is the best possible year to be a Seahawk.
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AROUND THE COOP
Around the Coop
The first public practice on July 25 is already sold out, per Field Gulls, before a single veteran has even walked back through the VMAC doors on the 24th. Nine more practices to go, and the reigning champs are drawing like a playoff game in shorts. Field Gulls
Seahawks.com’s camp storyline series asked the only question worth asking about whether Jadarian Price wins the starting job outright as a rookie. A first-rounder who never started a college game, now first in line by default. Rookie year, meet deep end. Seahawks.com
The Seahawks.com storyline countdown got to what Jaxon Smith-Njigba does for an encore after breaking the franchise’s single-season receiving record. The correct answer is ‘whatever he wants,’ and the terrifying part is he’s only 23. Seahawks.com
NFC WEST SCHADENFREUDE REPORT
RAMS
Turf Show Times previewed camp and floated the wild possibility that rookie Ty Simpson gets more coverage than the reigning MVP. The 13th overall pick is ‘battling’ Stetson Bennett for the backup job behind a 38-year-old Matthew Stafford, though the site suggests that job is Bennett’s to lose and Simpson likely won’t play a regular-season snap. So the big Rams camp story is a quarterback who won’t see the field, playing behind a quarterback whose age nobody wants to say out loud.
NINERS
NFL Media identified San Francisco’s biggest remaining roster hole and landed on safety, specifically free safety. This despite the 49ers spending draft picks on the position in 2023, 2024, and 2025 and still ending up, per the analysis, with no reliable center fielder. Their only notable offseason addition back there is Ashtyn Davis. Three straight drafts at one position and the note in July is still ‘they don’t have one.’
CARDINALS
Arizona’s fourth-round defensive lineman Kaleb Proctor, who put up nine sacks and 13 tackles for loss at Southeastern Louisiana last year, is expected to open camp on the PUP list with a knee injury suffered during offseason work, per Yahoo. A rebuilding roster that needs every young body it can find, and its intriguing rookie is already in a wrap before the pads go on. The desert can’t catch a break.
SEACHICKENS TRIVIA
In 2006 the Seahawks traded a 2007 first-round pick to the Patriots for this wide receiver, who had been named Super Bowl XXXIX MVP two seasons earlier. Who is he?
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Deion Branch. Seattle gave up a first-round pick to acquire the Louisville product from New England in 2006, then dealt him back to the Patriots in 2010 for a fourth-round pick. A steep price to pay, and then a discount to undo it.
THE GOLDEN EGG
🏆
This week’s egg goes to the least glamorous three letters in the sport. The camp PUP list is where hope goes to sit down for a minute, and this year it’s already holding Deven Eastern before the veterans have even arrived, with Zach Charbonnet likely to join to open the season. It’s not a death sentence. A camp PUP player can be activated the instant he’s cleared, no four-game penalty, no drama.
But it’s also the roster’s honesty serum. It tells you exactly who’s healthy, who’s behind, and whose spot just quietly came open for somebody else. In a camp this loaded, that little acronym is doing more roster-shaping than any signing Schneider could make two weeks out. Congratulations to the paperwork. You’ve earned it.
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Games Missed if Cleared in Time
4
Games Missed if Still on it After Cuts
1
Bubble Spot Quietly Opened
Got a Question for the Mailbag?
Camp opens Saturday and the roster math is about to get loud. Wondering who makes the 53, whether Price is really the guy, or how the Eastern injury shakes out? Send it in. The best questions get answered right here, in this voice, with exactly this much unsolicited opinion.
Five days to camp, and the roster's already telling on itself. — The Rooster