TOP STORIES
Ownership
The New Owner Isn’t the Khosla You’ve Been Reading About
The league sent a memo to all 32 teams following the Seahawks sale agreement, and it dropped a detail that reframes the whole thing: the controlling owner won’t be Vinod Khosla. It’ll be his wife, Neeru Khosla. Everybody spent the weekend building a dossier on the billionaire venture capitalist, and the person who’ll actually hold the gavel was one name over the entire time.
The Khosla-led group includes Vinod, Neeru, and their son Neal, and Vinod already got his one allotted tweet of excitement out of his system on Friday. Per the memo, you won’t be hearing from any of them again until the sale is final. Which, if you’ve followed how carefully the league polices new-owner messaging before a vote, is exactly the point of a memo like this.
$9.612B
The reported record sale price. Still the most ever paid for an NFL franchise, regardless of whose name is on the top line.
None of this changes the headline number, a reported $9.612 billion, still the largest price ever paid for an NFL franchise. It doesn’t change the timeline either: owners are expected to vote on approval in late August, with the meeting set for the 26th. What it changes is who Seahawks fans should actually be reading up on. Turns out we’ve been doing our homework on the wrong half of a marriage.
I’ll be honest, after the 49ers-minority-stake panic of last week, learning the controlling owner is a different person than everyone assumed is a strangely comforting plot twist. We know almost nothing about how Neeru Khosla will run a football team. We know almost nothing about how Vinod would have either. At least now we’re admitting it about the correct person.
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You spent the weekend reading about Vinod. The person actually signing off on this team is Neeru.
SOURCES →
Training Camp
The Best D-Line in Football Is Trying to Get Greedy
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The engine is Williams, who ESPN’s survey of coaches, executives and scouts just ranked the No. 1 defensive tackle in football, ahead of Jeffery Simmons, Jalen Carter and Chris Jones. He’s entering the final year of his deal, which is a sentence that should make everyone in Renton slightly nervous, but that’s a story for another day.
The name I keep circling is Murphy. He didn’t crack ESPN’s top ten at the position, landing an honorable mention instead, but the quote attached to him was the kind that gets a young player paid. A veteran defensive coach on Murphy: “He’s so explosive. Teams double him, and he can break through it.” When the league’s evaluators are describing your second-best interior lineman as a guy who beats double teams, the ceiling on this front isn’t a question of talent. It’s a question of how greedy they want to get.
SOURCES →
AROUND THE COOP
Around the Coop
The Seahawks have shown interest in ex-Lions cornerback Terrion Arnold, per his agent. Arnold is also facing felony armed robbery and kidnapping charges in Florida that carry a possible life sentence. Whatever the coverage upside, that is a very complicated depth-chart addition, and the phrase “per his agent” is doing an enormous amount of work here. Seattle Times
Former Seahawks scout Bucky Brooks is defending his 7-10 prediction for the defending champions. Bold work, predicting a losing record for a team that returns 20 of 22 starters and just won it all. Somebody put this take in a time capsule and we’ll open it in January. Field Gulls
Jaxon Smith-Njigba and A.J. Barner offered some revealing reflections on the title run on the team’s Making a Champion series. When your $42-million-a-year receiver is doing offseason podcast reps about leadership instead of tweeting about his contract, that’s a franchise operating exactly the way you’d hope. Field Gulls
NFC WEST SCHADENFREUDE REPORT
RAMS
The betting Super Bowl favorite still hasn’t paid Puka Nacua. The Athletic’s Nate Atkins wrote that nobody on the roster faces a bigger season for their long-term future, and ESPN’s Seth Walder noted the receiver depth behind Nacua and Davante Adams is “severely lacking.” So the plan is a top-heavy passing game with your best player on a rookie deal, no reinforcements, and no extension in hand. When you’re the favorite and the scariest sentence about your team is “what if he gets hurt,” that’s a choice.
NINERS
A ClutchPoints season preview went looking for the one thing that sinks San Francisco’s Super Bowl run and didn’t have to look hard: for all of Kyle Shanahan’s star power, the roster still has a critical soft spot that a loaded team is supposed to have long since fixed. Every summer the 49ers assemble a Ferrari and every summer there’s one lug nut nobody tightened. Enjoy the anxiety, Faithful.
SEACHICKENS TRIVIA
This three-time Pro Bowl running back won a Super Bowl with the 49ers and coined the infamous “For who? For what?” line in Philadelphia, then closed his career with four straight seasons in Seattle from 1998 to 2001. Who is he?
Tap to Reveal the Answer
Ricky Watters. He finished with 10,643 career rushing yards and posted back-to-back 1,200-yard seasons for the Seahawks in 1999 and 2000, then walked away rather than keep grinding.
THE GOLDEN EGG
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This week ESPN polled coaches, executives and scouts and put Leonard Williams atop the entire defensive tackle position, ahead of Jeffery Simmons, Jalen Carter and Chris Jones. That’s not a fan vote or a highlight reel. That’s the people who game-plan against him saying he’s the best in the league at what he does, at 31, entering a contract year. The Big Cat gets the egg, and the front office should take the ranking as a gentle reminder about who to keep happy this summer.
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ESPN DT Ranking
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2025 Sacks
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Got a Question for The Rooster?
Camp opens in twelve days and the mailbag is wide open. Ownership drama, the depth chart, whatever’s keeping you up at night. Send it in and I’ll answer the ones that make me laugh or make me think.
Twelve days to camp, and it turns out we've been reading up on the wrong half of the family. — The Rooster