TOP STORIES
Injury Report
Everybody Was Watching Emmanwori. Okada Is the One Who Didn’t Practice.
Seattle released the first injury report of the 2026 season after Sunday’s practice, and the name that mattered wasn’t the one we’ve been staring at for six weeks. Nick Emmanwori was limited, working his way back from ankle surgery. Ty Okada, the safety starting opposite Julian Love, did not practice at all. Hamstring.
8
Seahawks on the season’s first injury report. One didn’t practice, and he’s a starting safety.
Eight Seahawks landed on the report. One did not practice, four were limited, three went full. Okada is the lone DNP, which is a rough day for a guy who won a starting job in August without anybody making a fuss about it.
Then you look behind him. Bud Clark’s ankle ended his season on the first defensive snap in Nashville, and Field Gulls put it plainly: with Clark gone there is no other healthy safety depth on the active roster. Seattle carried three safeties into the season. Two of them showed up on the injury report on day one of game week.
The answers are all on the taxi squad. Rodney Thomas II, Maxen Hook, D’Anthony Bell and A.J. Finley are available, and Bell has been taking first-team reps for weeks precisely because this was always the shape of the room. Somebody in that group is going to get elevated, and it is going to happen in the next 48 hours.
“
Seattle carried three safeties into the season. Two of them showed up on the injury report on day one of game week.
One more thing got confirmed Sunday, and it explains a lot: Tory Horton’s mystery absence is a hamstring. He was limited. Emmanwori getting on the field was supposed to be the good news of the day. It still is. It’s just no longer the whole news.
SOURCES →
The Opponent
New England’s Best Defender Won’t Say If He’s Playing Wednesday
Keep Reading ↓
He is practicing. He skipped voluntary OTAs to make his position clear, Robert Kraft went public with the claim that New England had offered him the largest contract in franchise history, and no deal has materialized. Four days out from a Super Bowl rematch, that is a live wire.
There is a Seattle fingerprint on all of it. Devon Witherspoon signed for $33 million a year on August 15 and reset the cornerback market on his way out the door. Gonzalez now has a number to point at, and it is a number that was set by the guy lining up across the field from him Wednesday night. We didn’t mean to complicate New England’s cap. We just did.
“
We didn’t mean to complicate New England’s cap. We just did.
SOURCES →
AROUND THE COOP
Around the Coop
Peter Schrager went on the Pat McAfee Show and said he has never seen a bandwagon as full as the Rams’ for a team that lost twice to a division rival the year before. Somebody with a national platform did the arithmetic. We’ve been doing it out loud since February. Seattle Sports
Anthony Bradford (knee) and Josh Jones (knee) both turned up on the same injury report as the safeties. Bradford is the starting right guard and Jones is the only listed backup at either tackle spot. Two knees, four jobs, one Wednesday. Seahawks.com
Sam Darnold met the media Sunday and kept landing on sideline communication, because a Week 1 opener is a pile of unknowns you cannot install for. Nine NFL seasons, and five offensive coordinators before he even got out of Carolina, and the man’s chief concern is whether everybody can hear each other. Fair. Seahawks.com
NFC WEST SCHADENFREUDE REPORT
RAMS
Kickoff in Melbourne is 10:35 in the morning local time, and Los Angeles has decided the correct response is to pretend Australia does not exist. No adjusting to local clocks, depart Wednesday, arrive roughly a day before the game, fly straight home after. McVay says it goes back to what they learned in COVID about keeping guys in their routine. The Super Bowl favorite is opening its season like a man catching a red-eye for a morning meeting he did not schedule.
NINERS
San Francisco announced its captains for the season and they are the same eight men who had the job last year. Purdy, McCaffrey, Kittle, Bosa, Juszczyk, Trent Williams, Warner, Lenoir. No vote necessary, apparently. They flew 7,855 miles, budgeted nine days to get their sleep right, and used the time to confirm nothing had changed.
SEACHICKENS TRIVIA
This Clemson linebacker was Seattle’s first-round pick at No. 15 overall in 1998, made the PFWA All-Rookie Team, and led the Seahawks in tackles in three separate seasons. Who is he?
Tap to Reveal the Answer
Anthony Simmons. He ran in the 4.2s at Clemson and finished with 595 tackles, 10 sacks and nine interceptions in Seattle, but his body only gave him 87 games across seven seasons.
THE GOLDEN EGG
🏆
Nine days ago these four were cap casualties, roster math, names in a transaction wire nobody reads twice. D’Anthony Bell wasn’t even on the initial 17. Seattle went and re-signed him Saturday and then, one practice later, the starting safety pulled up with a hamstring.
This is what a practice squad is actually for, and it almost never gets to prove it in Week 1. Somebody in this group is going to be standing on the Lumen Field grass Wednesday night while the championship banner goes up, having spent August wondering whether the phone would ring at all.
Bell has been getting first-team reps for weeks. Finley intercepted a Darnold pass at Football Fest on the exact field where he tore his ACL a year earlier. Thomas II and Hook have played real NFL football. None of them were part of the plan. All of them are the plan now.
4
Safeties on the Practice Squad
3
Safeties on the 53
2
Days Until Kickoff
The Mailbag Is Open and Wednesday Is Almost Here
Questions about the safety room, the banner, the Patriots, or whether you should take the day off work. Send them in. I answer the good ones and I answer the unhinged ones with equal seriousness.
Two more sleeps. — The Rooster