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Hard Knocks Lands Tuesday, and Seattle’s Best Story Was Working a Warehouse Floor
Hard Knocks: Training Camp with the Seattle Seahawks debuts Tuesday on HBO and HBO Max, the first time this franchise has ever done the show. Five episodes. And per ESPN’s preview of what you’re about to watch, the story most likely to flatten you belongs to a guy who was not in an NFL building at all last season.
Second-year outside linebacker Jalan Gaines signed with Seattle as an undrafted free agent, lost his practice squad bid to a training camp injury, and got picked up by nobody. So he took a job at a Costco warehouse just south of Seattle, making around $21 an hour, supporting a family that includes two young kids. That’s the part of the NFL nobody puts in a highlight package.
$21
Roughly what Jalan Gaines made per hour at a Costco warehouse last season, after an injury ended his practice squad bid.
The gym where he trained sits directly across Interstate 405 from Seahawks headquarters, close enough to see the giant 12 flag hanging on the outside wall of the indoor practice facility. Every single day. Seattle re-signed him in February and he called it one of the best days of his life. “Seeing that flag every day just reminded me that I still have a chance to be a part of this organization,” Gaines told ESPN. “I always knew that somehow, some way, that I was going to find my way back here.”
None of this was Mike Macdonald’s idea, and it does not sit comfortably next to a team whose internal motto is Mission Over Bulls—. He’s made peace with it anyway, calling the show a gift from the football gods and volunteering to SI that he is “one of the most awkward guys in the history of America.” You will also get Leonard Williams’ hobbies and, presumably, several lingering shots of Devon Witherspoon’s unsigned contract.
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Twelve months ago he was moving freight for about twenty-one dollars an hour. Tomorrow night he’s on HBO.
Episode one is the fun one. Episode four or five is where they film men losing their jobs.
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Roster
Two Guys Named White Are Quietly Auditioning for the Last Receiver Chair
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Irvin Charles, whose path to the 53 runs almost entirely through special teams, also caught a touchdown on Saturday. That is exactly how a gunner turns himself into a conversation.
Behind the four settled spots in that room, this is the actual competition of Seattle’s camp, and it is going to be decided by three exhibition games and a couple of hundred anonymous reps. The cruel part: HBO’s cameras will be in the building for the phone calls that end it.
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AROUND THE COOP
Around the Coop
Right guard Anthony Bradford and middle linebacker Ernest Jones IV were back and working at Saturday’s practice after neither finished Friday’s full-pads session. Two starters walking off early in the same afternoon is how a good camp becomes a bad August. Both fine. Everyone can unclench. ESPN
Seattle worked out former Dolphins offensive lineman Kion Smith, undrafted in 2021, who got his first NFL starting experience last season in year five. Schneider window-shopping for linemen in the first week of camp is not a crisis. It’s just his idea of a hobby. Field Gulls
With third-round corner Julian Neal out for several practices, Michael Dansby has been the rookie defensive back making the most noise. Dansby was the 255th pick. There is nothing Seattle enjoys more than a seventh-rounder making the draft look silly. Field Gulls
NFC WEST SCHADENFREUDE REPORT
RAMS
Sean McVay spent his first padded practice grading the two men who would be running his Super Bowl offense if anything happened to a 38-year-old quarterback, and the verdict was that fourth-year backup Stetson Bennett IV and rookie Ty Simpson “did a nice job.” He added that Bennett “has really taken incredible strides.” That is a lot of encouragement-flavored language for a roster built to win a title in the next four months.
NINERS
San Francisco’s answer at receiver reported for duty Saturday: Deebo Samuel, the guy they shipped out last year, back in red and gold and limited to about 10 team-drill snaps. Meanwhile their rookie receiver De’Zhaun Stribling sat with hamstring tightness and a defensive lineman left on a cart. Nothing says forward-thinking like re-signing a player you already decided you didn’t want.
CARDINALS
Mike LaFleur’s big innovation in Arizona is scheduling: on-field work now goes last in the day, which he stressed is “definitely not a copy-and-paste from my previous stops.” A 3-14 team spent an offseason changing coaches, cutting its quarterback, and its most confident public statement so far is about what time practice starts.
SEACHICKENS TRIVIA
Seattle took this Virginia Tech safety in the fifth round of the 2010 draft, 133rd overall. He played all nine of his NFL seasons here, made four Pro Bowls, and intercepted Peyton Manning in Super Bowl XLVIII. Who is he?
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Kam Chancellor. Twelve career interceptions, two second-team All-Pro nods, and a hit radius that made receivers reconsider their career paths — all for the price of a fifth-round pick.
THE GOLDEN EGG
🏆
Every year we talk about the roster bubble like it’s a spreadsheet. It isn’t. It’s a guy with two young kids and a wrecked practice squad chance taking a warehouse job for around $21 an hour, working shifts, keeping his body in shape on his own time, and driving to a gym that happens to sit across I-405 from the building that cut him loose.
So the egg goes to the warehouse. It paid the bills. It kept a family fed. It did not ask Jalan Gaines to give up, and it gave him something almost nobody in this league gets: a full year of knowing exactly what the alternative looks like. Seattle re-signed him in February. He said it was one of the best days of his life, and you believe him instantly.
Somewhere on a loading dock, a shift supervisor is going to turn on HBO tomorrow night and yell.
$21
Per Hour
2
Young Kids at Home
405
The Interstate Between the Gym and the VMAC
Got a Question? Fire Away.
Contract math, cut-day predictions, whether Seattle should keep six receivers, or your unsolicited Hard Knocks casting notes. Send it in and I’ll answer the good ones honestly, which is usually worse for everybody.
Camp's back on the grass this afternoon. Tomorrow night the whole country gets a look at it. — The Rooster