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Training Camp
Camp Opens Tomorrow, and the Only Question Left Is the Hard One
The gates at the VMAC swing open Friday for the first training camp of a title defense in a decade, and here’s the strange part: there isn’t much of a mystery about who this team is. ESPN’s Brady Henderson laid out the offseason ledger and it reads like a list of things that didn’t happen. Klint Kubiak left for a head-coaching job. Coby Bryant, Riq Woolen, Boye Mafe and half the backfield in Kenneth Walker III walked out the door. It sounds like a gutting until you notice the Seahawks re-signed every other free agent who contributed to a 17-win season, took zero cap casualties, and kept more of the roster together than most recent champions.
You don’t reload a champion. You just try not to break the thing that already works. The one genuinely new part is Brian Fleury, a first-time coordinator inheriting an offense that already had an identity. Henderson calls Kubiak’s exit the biggest loss of the five, and he’s probably right, but “our biggest problem is that our great coordinator got promoted” is the kind of problem you sign up for.
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You don’t reload a champion. You just try not to break the thing that already works.
So the question camp actually answers isn’t who are these guys. We know who they are. It’s whether a group that already climbed the mountain can be bothered to do it again with nearly the same faces. Macdonald spent the spring insisting the team isn’t defending anything. Tomorrow we find out if the players bought it.
There’s one asterisk, and it’s the training room. Seattle opens camp with five bodies on the active/PUP list: Zach Charbonnet and Kenny McIntosh both rehabbing knees, safety Nick Emmanwori, defensive tackle Deven Eastern, and converted corner Tyrone Broden. Charbonnet’s placement surprised nobody, but a five-name PUP list the morning the doors open is a reminder that “intact” and “healthy” are not the same word.
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Players opening camp on the active/PUP list: Charbonnet, McIntosh, Emmanwori, Eastern, and Broden.
And yes, the Witherspoon extension is still hanging over all of it, still unsigned three-plus months after Seattle made its first offer. Which means the cameras are about to get exactly the storyline they were hoping for.
SOURCES →
Roster
One Tight End Cut, Four Tryouts, and a Rugby Player Who’s Never Played a Down
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Bringing back a guy you drafted a decade ago to fill a hole you just created is peak late-July roster churn, and honestly it’s the most on-brand thing this front office does every summer. But the fourth name on the tryout sheet is the one worth your attention. Seattle also hosted Ben Te Kura, an Australian rugby player billed as the tallest ever in the National Rugby League, a man who has never played a snap of organized football in his life.
This is exactly the kind of long-shot swing you take when you’re a champion with a settled roster and nothing to lose by kicking a tire. It almost certainly amounts to nothing. But if you’re not going to gamble on an enormous rugby athlete the week before Hard Knocks arrives, when exactly are you going to do it?
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AROUND THE COOP
Around the Coop
The Witherspoon offer has a real shape now: Ian Rapoport reports Seattle is dangling a deal worth over $30 million a year that could make him the league’s highest-paid corner. Three-plus months since the first offer, still no signature. The cameras arrive Friday. Someone in that building can read a calendar. Field Gulls
HBO’s Hard Knocks trailer dropped ahead of the August 4 premiere, Seattle’s first turn in the franchise’s history. Five episodes of a Super Bowl champion learning what it’s like to have a microphone in the shower. The good news: there are worse things to document than winning. Yahoo Sports
ESPN’s projected 53-man roster has sixth-rounder Emmanuel Henderson Jr. making the cut, and lists Tory Horton among the five receivers who survive despite last year’s shin injury. A rookie speedster and a comeback story both penciled in before a single padded practice. Camp exists to erase pencil. ESPN
NFC WEST SCHADENFREUDE REPORT
RAMS
Los Angeles built a Super-Bowl-or-bust roster and the man tasked with protecting 38-year-old Matthew Stafford’s blindside may not be available for it. Left tackle Alaric Jackson avoided criminal charges and entered a pretrial diversion program, but Pro Football Rumors notes he could still face NFL discipline once the league finishes its own look. You can import all the pass rushers you want; it’s a harder trick to guarantee your quarterback stays vertical.
CARDINALS
Arizona’s site laid out its camp questions and landed on a familiar duo of hopes: 2024 first-rounders Marvin Harrison Jr. and Darius Robinson both need to be more than they’ve been, because the offense and defense are quietly counting on them. When your rebuild’s plan is “the guys we already drafted need to be good now,” you haven’t fixed anything. You’ve just set a deadline.
SEACHICKENS TRIVIA
This Guadalajara-born placekicker came to Seattle in a 1978 trade from the Dallas Cowboys, cost the Seahawks only a fifth-round pick, and handled the kicking duties for four seasons through 1981. Who is he?
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Efrén Herrera. He’d turned down a chance to play professional soccer back in Mexico to chase a U.S. college scholarship at UCLA instead, then spent four years booting field goals for a young Seahawks franchise after the Cowboys traded him over a contract dispute.
Got a Question? Feed the Rooster.
Camp’s open, the roster’s set, and you’ve got opinions about all of it. Send your questions, your hot takes, and your wild depth-chart theories to the mailbag. The good ones get answered. The unhinged ones get answered first.
The wait's over. Tomorrow we finally watch football again. — The Rooster