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The Seahawks Won’t Surrender a Home Game to the International Series. Not in 2026. Maybe Not Ever.
Good news from the scheduling gods: the Seahawks will play all nine of their home games at Lumen Field in 2026. Per Field Gulls’ Mookie Alexander, the finalization of the Cowboys-Ravens game in Rio de Janeiro closed the last possible door on Seattle being the designated home team in an international matchup. Nine games on the docket abroad this year. Zero involving the Seahawks as hosts.
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Home games at Lumen Field in 2026. All of them. Zero sacrificed to the international series.
There are still two international games where Seattle could be the visiting team: the 49ers’ game in Mexico City and the Commanders’ game in London. But that means a road trip, not a lost home date. Seattle has never relinquished a home game since the NFL began its international push in 2007. That streak is now legally old enough to vote.
The Seahawks have only ventured outside North America twice for regular-season games: a 27-3 win over Oakland at Wembley in 2018 and a 21-16 loss to Tampa Bay in Germany. The franchise’s entire international history fits on a Post-it note. That’s the way the 12s like it. Lumen Field generates the kind of noise that makes visiting quarterbacks forget their own names. Why would you export that advantage to a neutral site where half the crowd is there for the novelty?
The real schedule action is still coming. The full slate drops in mid-May, and we still don’t know who’s walking into the Wednesday Night Football opener on September 9. Six candidates remain. The anticipation is half the fun. The other half is knowing every single one of those home games stays in Renton’s orbit.
SOURCES →
Draft
ESPN’s Barnwell Has Seattle Trading Down From 32. He’s Singing Schneider’s Favorite Song.
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The logic is airtight. Schneider traded out of the 32nd pick after the Super Bowl XLVIII win. He moved down in 2016, 2017, 2018, and twice in 2019. The man treats late first-round picks like currency, not inventory. With only four picks entering this draft, missing fourth- and fifth-rounders, the math practically demands a trade back.
4
Total picks Seattle holds entering the draft. The fewest in the NFL.
One wrinkle Barnwell flags: trading out of the first round means losing the fifth-year option on whoever you’d draft at 32. That’s real value, especially at cornerback where Witherspoon’s extension looms. But Schneider has never let a fifth-year option stop him from accumulating ammunition. The draft is 17 days away. The phone lines in Renton are warm.
SOURCES →
AROUND THE COOP
Around the Coop
The Seahawks’ offseason program starts April 20, exactly two weeks from today. Teams with new head coaches got a head start today. Seattle didn’t need one. They have a trophy. Field Gulls
Seattle Sports compiled 12 mock drafts for pick 32: the consensus is split between cornerback and edge rusher, with Jadarian Price and T.J. Parker as the wild cards. Schneider is probably already past all of them. Seattle Sports
Ari Meirov’s latest cap space tracker has the Seahawks at roughly $33 million in available space, ninth-most in the league. Enough room for a Witherspoon extension, a couple of draft picks, and precisely one fancy dinner at Canlis. Bleacher Report
Kirk Cousins agreed to sign with the Raiders, giving Las Vegas a veteran bridge while they prepare to take Fernando Mendoza first overall. The carousel never stops spinning. It just changes riders. Yahoo Sports
NFC WEST SCHADENFREUDE REPORT
RAMS
The Rams will open their season in Melbourne, Australia, against the 49ers. That’s a 16-hour flight to play a Thursday night game on the other side of the planet. The Seahawks, meanwhile, will be at home. On a Wednesday. On NBC. With a banner to raise. Sean McVay has reportedly explored Kirk Cousins as a backup behind Stafford. The most expensive clipboard holder in the Southern Hemisphere.
NINERS
The Niners Trent Williams saga enters its fourth month. The 49ers declined his $10 million option bonus, inflating his cap hit to $47 million with zero guaranteed dollars. Lynch says they’re “on the precipice” of a deal. He has been saying some version of that sentence since February. Meanwhile, Aiyuk still hasn’t been released because San Francisco wants a draft pick in return for a receiver who stopped showing up to rehab. The asking price for damaged goods keeps not being met.
CARDINALS
NFL Spin Zone summed up the Cardinals’ draft situation perfectly: “stuck in a pit of nothingness.” Arizona has the third pick, no franchise quarterback, a new head coach with zero NFL experience, and a roster that went 1-11 under Jacoby Brissett’s starts last season. Multiple mockers have them taking offensive lineman Francis Mauigoa at three, which is the kind of pick that gets a GM fired if the team wins four games again. The rebuild has a rebuild inside of it, and now the rebuild’s rebuild needs a rebuild.
SEACHICKENS TRIVIA
Dave Brown holds the Seattle Seahawks’ all-time franchise record for career interceptions with 50, accumulated over 11 seasons from 1976 to 1986. Brown was originally selected by the Seahawks from the Pittsburgh Steelers in the 1976 NFL expansion draft after winning a Super Bowl ring as a rookie in Pittsburgh. He was inducted into the Seahawks Ring of Honor in 1992. After retiring as a player, Brown returned to the Seahawks in a coaching capacity. What position did Brown coach during his seven seasons on the Seahawks’ staff from 1992 to 1998?
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Defensive backs coach. Brown served as the Seattle Seahawks’ defensive backs coach from 1992 to 1998, spending seven seasons on staff before the coaching change after the 1998 season.
THE GOLDEN EGG
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Fourteen days from now, the doors at the VMAC open for the voluntary offseason program. The key word is voluntary. The NFL can’t make anyone show up until minicamp in June. And yet last year, the Seahawks had near-perfect attendance from the very first day. Mike Macdonald and the players both credited that early buy-in as a foundational piece of the Super Bowl run that followed.
That standard is now the baseline. When Macdonald talked about the offseason program at the league meeting, his message wasn’t a plea for attendance. It was an expectation, baked into the culture like the rain in November. The 2025 Seahawks didn’t win a championship because they showed up to voluntary workouts. But they won a championship partly because the kind of team that shows up to voluntary workouts is the kind of team that wins championships. Causation is fuzzy. Correlation is a Lombardi Trophy. Good enough for us.
~100%
2025 Voluntary Attendance
14
Days Until VMAC Opens
1
Super Bowl Trophies Since
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Seventeen days to Pittsburgh. The passport stays in the drawer. The home dates stay on the calendar. Go Hawks. — The Rooster