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Terrion Arnold Is a Seahawk. Whether He’s a Football Player Is Up to Somebody Else.
Terrion Arnold plans to sign with Seattle on a one-year deal, per ESPN’s Adam Schefter, with Ian Rapoport reporting the one-year term. The multi-team tour that ran through Houston, New Orleans and the Giants ended in Renton, which is where it started. The former Lions first-round pick is 23 and has 22 career starts. He also has eight pending felony counts stemming from an alleged robbery and kidnapping near Tampa last February.
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Pending felony counts — four of kidnapping, four of armed robbery — filed against Arnold after he surrendered to Tampa police in June.
Here is the part Seattle does not control. Schefter reported the NFL now has to decide whether to place Arnold on the Commissioner’s Exempt List, a designation that would keep him off the practice field indefinitely while his case works through the courts. Per SI, his arraignment happened Thursday over Zoom, and his next court date is a status hearing on Oct. 5 in Tampa that he has to attend in person.
The Seahawks did their homework in public, which is a strange thing to be able to say. HBO aired the whole workout, handshake included. Macdonald called it “a great visit, a great tryout” on Monday and said there were “other things that are surrounding it.” Schneider, on camera, mentioned that Jalen Milroe vouched for his old Alabama teammate. You do not usually get to watch a front office decide something.
Arnold posted a $1 million bond and is free to travel and work, and Schneider said on the show that Seattle believed he’d be available for the preseason. That is Seattle’s read. It is not a ruling.
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Schneider made his decision Thursday. The one that actually determines whether Arnold plays a snap this year gets made by somebody who has never set foot in Renton.
The third cornerback job behind Devon Witherspoon and Josh Jobe was the one genuinely open spot on a defense that led the league in scoring last year. Seattle just added a former top-25 pick to that competition on a cheap one-year deal, which is exactly the kind of swing a Super Bowl team can afford. It’s also a swing where the pitch might never get thrown.
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Camp
Camp Is Over. Tomorrow There’s a Scoreboard.
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Seahawks.com’s read on the day was that the passing game looks noticeably further along than it did at this point a year ago, with Sam Darnold stacking big throws including a couple of deep shots to Rashid Shaheed. Last August the offense was still learning its own vocabulary. This August it has a Super Bowl and a returning cast and a new coordinator adding motion on top of a machine that already worked.
None of which you’ll see much of Saturday. The starters on a defending champion do not need August reps, and the guys who actually need this game are the ones whose names you’d have to look up. The roster comes down to 53 by the end of the month, and a whole lot of players in Renton get exactly three exhibition games to argue against arithmetic.
Watch the backups. It’s the only preseason home game of the year, and the next time these seats fill up there’s a banner going up.
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AROUND THE COOP
Around the Coop
Saturday is the ninth preseason meeting between these two clubs, and Seattle leads the series 5-3. The two teams also see each other in Week 13 on Monday Night Football, Dec. 7. So you get the third-string version tomorrow and the version that counts in December. Only one of them will be on in every bar in America. Seahawks.com
Brian Fleury arrived from a San Francisco offense that ran an NFL-high 491 plays out of two-back formations last season, per ESPN Research. Leonard Williams already called the pre-snap look a circus. Turns out the circus has a fullback in it, which is unfortunate timing for a fullback room that just lost its best one. ESPN
Field Gulls ran the stock up, stock down board heading into Saturday and noted the honest thing: almost every real battle left on this roster is a depth battle. That’s what winning a Super Bowl and bringing 20 of 22 starters back does to a summer. The drama is on the back half of the depth chart or it isn’t anywhere. Field Gulls
It has been more than 185 days since Seattle won Super Bowl LX, and Saturday is the only home preseason game on the 2026 calendar. Six months of parade footage, ring photos and a documentary. Tomorrow somebody finally has to block somebody. Yahoo Sports
NFC WEST SCHADENFREUDE REPORT
RAMS
Los Angeles still has not named a backup quarterback. Stetson Bennett has taken the reps in camp and has yet to throw a regular-season NFL pass, and Sean McVay said this week he hasn’t decided whether Bennett even plays in the preseason opener at Kansas City. The Rams have the reigning MVP, a defense they mortgaged the future for, and no announced plan for the week their 38-year-old quarterback lands wrong. Not a crisis in August. August is not the month that tests it.
NINERS
San Francisco opened its preseason at home Thursday night and lost 19-13 to Tennessee, which played its starters early against a 49ers lineup made almost entirely of backups. The headline out of Levi’s afterward was a rookie receiver catching seven passes for 63 yards. That’s a fine night for De’Zhaun Stribling. It is a thin harvest for a franchise that spent the whole summer telling everyone it was chasing a sixth ring.
CARDINALS
Arizona beat the Raiders 27-14 in Las Vegas on Thursday, and their veteran quarterbacks were literally perfect: Jacoby Brissett and Gardner Minshew combined to go 15 of 15 for 123 yards and three touchdowns in the first half. Flawless. Not one incompletion. The Cardinals reported to camp early, played in Canton, and have now banked more August football than anybody in the league. Somebody should tell them the season starts in September.
SEACHICKENS TRIVIA
This Oklahoma State left tackle went sixth overall in 2010 and was the very first draft pick of the Pete Carroll and John Schneider era, then started at left tackle in Seattle for six seasons. Who is he?
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Russell Okung. The regime that would go on to draft Earl Thomas eight picks later, then Richard Sherman, Kam Chancellor and Russell Wilson, opened its account with an offensive lineman — the least glamorous possible first move by two men who were about to blow up the league.
Got a Question? Yell It Into the Void.
The mailbag runs on your bad ideas, your cap-space fan fiction, and your deeply personal grievances about the 53-man roster. Send them in. I answer the ones that make me laugh and the ones that make me nervous.
Preseason football at five o'clock tomorrow. Set the expectations low and the volume high. — The Rooster