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The Only Real Vacancy on the Best Defense in Football
Seattle held together almost the entire defense that gave up a league-shaping 17.2 points per game and won a Super Bowl. Almost. When camp opens July 25, there is exactly one genuinely open starting job on that unit, and it’s at safety next to Julian Love. Seahawks.com laid it out this week as part of its camp-storyline countdown, and the short version is this: Coby Bryant is a Bear now, and somebody has to take his spot.
Losing a starting safety off the league’s best defense sounds scarier than it is. As the team pointed out, the pieces around that spot are so interchangeable that when Bryant missed time last year, Love slid over and Ty Okada covered Love’s old role without the whole thing wobbling. The job isn’t a hole so much as a chair somebody gets to sit in.
Okada opens as the favorite, and he earned it with real play down the stretch. But this is not a coronation. Seattle spent a second-round pick on Bud Clark, a ballhawking safety out of TCU who piled up 15 interceptions over four college seasons, then added Rodney Thomas II in free agency, a player who started 25 games in his first two years with the Colts. Bringing back D’Anthony Bell and getting AJ Finley healthy rounds out a room with more legitimate options than the depth chart has slots.
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Interceptions Bud Clark recorded over four seasons at TCU before Seattle drafted him in the second round.
And lurking over all of it is Nick Emmanwori, technically a safety, actually a shape-shifter who spent last year as everything from a slot cover man to an edge setter to a de facto linebacker. If the safety math gets weird, Macdonald has the one guy who makes weird math work.
One open job. On the best defense in football. That’s the whole vacancy report, and it’s the most interesting fight of the summer precisely because nothing else on that side of the ball is up for grabs.
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The job isn’t a hole so much as a chair somebody gets to sit in.
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Analysis
The Camp Where Nobody Is Fighting for a Starting Job
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That reframes what actually matters this summer. The battles worth watching aren’t about who starts Week 1, they’re about roles, rotations, and which players Macdonald trusts when the depth chart inevitably gets tested by October. Who’s the sub-package guy. Who’s the third safety. Who the staff reaches for when something breaks. Over 17 games, those calls end up mattering more than any headline camp battle.
It’s a good problem, the kind of problem you only get to have after you win the whole thing. But don’t confuse settled with finished. The margins are where seasons quietly go sideways, and Seattle spent this offseason stockpiling bodies at the margins on purpose.
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AROUND THE COOP
Around the Coop
ESPN’s annual cornerback rankings slotted Devon Witherspoon fourth, one spot ahead of Trent McDuffie, who happens to be the highest-paid corner in football. Nothing complicates a negotiation quite like an outside authority publicly agreeing that your guy is underpaid. A to Z Sports
Seahawks.com is rolling out camp storylines one position a day, safety Tuesday, cornerback next. When your countdown of biggest questions is really a countdown of small ones, that’s what defending a title looks like. Seahawks.com
NFC WEST SCHADENFREUDE REPORT
RAMS
The Rams are the consensus best roster in football, and ESPN’s Seth Walder went out of his way this week to name the crack in the foundation: the receiver depth behind Davante Adams and Puka Nacua is, in his words, “severely lacking.” Meanwhile the front office keeps declining to hand Nacua his extension. So the plan is a top-heavy passing game with one star waiting on his money and a drop-off behind him that a national analyst can see from space. Cool blueprint. Christmas Day at Lumen will test it.
CARDINALS
New head coach Mike LaFleur is running Arizona’s camp practices later in the afternoon, and the beat’s defense of the schedule was to point out that Bruce Arians, Steve Wilks, and Kliff Kingsbury all liked midafternoon starts too. Reader, look at that list. That is not the coaching lineage you invoke to reassure people. Enjoy the extra heat, fellas.
SEACHICKENS TRIVIA
Seattle selected this defensive end 10th overall out of Texas A&M in 1980, and over 12 seasons he anchored the pass rush, once posting 3.5 sacks in a single game against the Raiders in 1983 before eventually landing in the franchise’s Ring of Honor. Who is he?
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Jacob Green. He was one of Seattle’s first genuine defensive stars, part of the group that dragged the young franchise from cellar-dweller to contender in the mid-1980s, and he was inducted into the Ring of Honor in 1995.
Got a Question? Feed the Bird.
The mailbag is open. Ask about the safety battle, the cap, the sale, or whatever’s keeping you up at night 18 days before camp. Best questions get answered in a future issue, name deflected on request.
Seventeen days to camp, and the only open job on this defense is the best show in town. — The Rooster