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Seattle Went Out and Got Another Fullback, Which Is Not Great News
The Seahawks signed fullback Brock Lampe on Thursday and waived undrafted rookie tight end Lance Mason to clear the roster spot. Teams do not go fullback shopping in August because they are curious about fullbacks. They do it because the one they have is not walking through the door anytime soon.
Robbie Ouzts has now missed several straight practices with an issue nobody in the building will name out loud. He also missed the NFC Championship Game and Super Bowl LX with a neck injury, which is the part that makes the silence feel heavier than it probably deserves to. A team that had nothing to worry about would not be adding lead blockers on a Thursday afternoon in the second week of camp.
Lampe is a genuinely interesting little pickup, though. He went undrafted out of Northern Illinois in 2025 and spent last season on injured reserve in New England, meaning he technically belonged to the franchise Seattle dismantled in February without ever having to watch it from the sideline. He also played four years for Thomas Hammock, his head coach with the Huskies, who is now Seattle’s senior offensive assistant and running backs coach. Schneider’s Rolodex strikes again.
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Consecutive games Brock Lampe played at Northern Illinois across four seasons — under his now-Seahawks position coach.
The cost was Lance Mason, the Wisconsin tight end who spent about two weeks as the roster’s most charming footnote. Ninety-man rosters are a revolving door with a nameplate on it.
What this actually means: the fullback spot is a real position in Brian Fleury’s offense, with all the motion and wing-T business the players keep describing, and Seattle just decided it could not go into a preseason opener with a question mark there. Ouzts will get an update eventually. The roster move already gave you one.
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A team that had nothing to worry about would not be adding lead blockers on a Thursday afternoon in the second week of camp.
SOURCES →
Hard Knocks
Derick Hall Body-Slammed a Teammate on National Television and Says It’s Fine Now
Keep Reading ↓
Asked about it after Wednesday’s practice, Hall acknowledged things got out of hand and said everyone has moved on. “At the end of the day, we all love each other,” he told reporters, which is the standard translation of “I put a guard on the ground and we’re good.”
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Seattle asked for the spotlight. This is what the spotlight picks up.
Nobody should be shocked. Padded practices in early August produce this every year at every camp in the league. The difference is that this year there were eleven cameras and a narrator, and the man at the center of it just signed a three-year extension to be one of the faces of this defense. Seattle asked for the spotlight. This is what the spotlight picks up.
SOURCES →
AROUND THE COOP
Around the Coop
Seattle signed cornerback Jordan Washington on Wednesday, the undrafted Stanford product they had already looked at during rookie minicamp, and waived cornerback Brandon Johnson with an injury designation. One developmental defensive back swapped for another. The bottom of a 90-man roster is a group text nobody stays in for long. Heavy
Camp leaves Renton for a night on Saturday: Football Fest at Lumen Field, gates at 4:15, practice at 5:20, tickets sixteen dollars. Sixteen dollars to watch the defending champions run install in an empty stadium. Cheapest thing in this city that isn’t a library card. KXLY
Actual football is eight days out. The preseason opener against Dallas is Saturday, August 15 at 5 p.m. PT at Lumen on KING 5. The starters won’t matter. The roster bubble will. Watch the guys whose names you had to look up. SI
Safety Ty Okada says the thing that will come through on Hard Knocks is this team’s camaraderie. He’s running with the first team and he’s on the cast list, so he’s auditioning for a starting job and a storyline at the same time. Efficient. Seattle Sports
NFC WEST SCHADENFREUDE REPORT
NINERS
San Francisco signed offensive lineman Kion Smith to a one-year deal Thursday and waived a receiver to fit him. Seattle worked Smith out earlier this summer, looked at him, and moved along. The 49ers looked at the same tape and handed him a contract. Two front offices, one journeyman lineman, entirely different levels of desperation about the offensive line.
CARDINALS
Arizona got the honor of kicking off the entire 2026 NFL season in Canton, took a lead with 1:55 left, and then watched Carolina rookie Haynes King run five yards into the end zone with no time remaining. Panthers 33, Cardinals 30. They started camp a week before everyone else specifically to prepare for this game. First team on the field all summer, first team to lose all season.
SEACHICKENS TRIVIA
Seattle sent this first-team All-Pro center and a first-round pick to New Orleans in the 2015 trade that brought Jimmy Graham to the Pacific Northwest. Who is he?
Tap to Reveal the Answer
Max Unger. A second-round pick out of Oregon in 2009 and a first-team All-Pro in 2012, he anchored the Super Bowl XLVIII line — and John Schneider has since said on the record that he regrets making the deal.
THIS DAY IN SEAHAWKS HISTORY
2010
August 7, 2010
The Referee Came to Renton and Admitted It
Bill Leavy, the head official for Super Bowl XL, was touring NFL training camps to explain that season’s rule changes when he stopped at Seahawks headquarters in Renton and volunteered something else entirely. He said he had kicked two calls in the fourth quarter and that he had impacted the game. Four and a half years after Detroit, an official stood in our building and said it out loud. It did not change the result. It has never stopped being satisfying.
Got a Question? Fire Away.
The mailbag is open and it is not picky. Roster math, cap gymnastics, grievances about the 2015 tight end trade, questions about whether a fullback can save a season. Send it in and I’ll answer it with more honesty than the injury report.
Go be nice to a fullback today. Seattle is clearly running low. — The Rooster