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Injury
Five Days of Hip Panic and It Was the Other Muscle
Sunday morning, before most of the league had kicked off, the reports arrived and rewrote the diagnosis. NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport said Sam Darnold’s injury is actually a glute injury, and that it is a muscle problem not considered major. FOX’s Jay Glazer landed in the same place. Both had Darnold out at Arizona on Sunday, with a real chance he is back the following week at Washington.
Seattle also never filed the paperwork that would have settled it the other way. No injured reserve, no four-game parking spot, which is a front office telling you what it believes without holding a press conference about it.
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Games Darnold would have missed had Seattle used injured reserve. It didn’t.
So we spent five days as amateur hip specialists for nothing. I read the phrase “muscular rather than structural” so many times last week that I started saying it about my own back. Field Gulls, to its eternal credit, ran the headline the rest of us were too polite to write.
The team gets back to the practice field this afternoon after four days off, a light workout at the VMAC, and that is where the real information lives. Eleven days between kickoffs is a gift for a quarterback with a strained muscle and a nightmare for everyone who has to wait through it.
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The most useful sentence in Sunday’s reporting wasn’t the diagnosis. It was the part where nobody filed injured reserve paperwork.
None of it changes Sunday. Drew Lock takes the first snap in Glendale against a team that just went out and won a game nobody thought it could win.
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QB Room
Nobody Is Coming to Rescue Drew Lock, and Nobody Needs To
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That is not a coach hedging. Lock went 16 of 22 for 187 yards with a 45-yard touchdown to Jaxon Smith-Njigba, on a night he had not taken a practice snap all week. The idea that Seattle should now go shopping for a veteran arm, with Mason Rudolph the name making the rounds, mostly reveals how strange it is that a defending champion’s backup plan is this settled.
Jalen Milroe is the emergency option behind him and has never started an NFL game. That is the only genuinely uncomfortable part of this, and it stays uncomfortable for exactly as long as Lock stays upright.
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AROUND THE COOP
Around the Coop
Seattle declined to move Darnold to injured reserve after initial testing came back clean, which means a return inside four weeks is the expectation. Teams do not skip the roster relief out of sentiment. They skip it when they think the guy is coming back soon. Pro Football Rumors
Arizona opened Week 2 as a home underdog to Seattle even after knocking off the Chargers. The market watched the same game we did, shrugged, and installed the Cardinals as dogs in their own building. Somebody in Glendale has that screenshot saved already. SI
Kansas City is publicly raving about Kenneth Walker III’s influence on its running back room. Of course they are. We watched him do it here for four years and then watched him leave, and he shows up on Sunday Night Football in Week 7 whether we’ve made peace with it or not. SI
NFC WEST SCHADENFREUDE REPORT
RAMS
Myles Garrett is having arthroscopic knee surgery and going on injured reserve, out at least four games. Los Angeles sent Jared Verse and premium picks to Cleveland for him in June, watched him get through one 27-7 loss on another continent, and now gets to spend a month explaining the plan. The most expensive defensive line in football keeps shrinking by the week.
CARDINALS
Arizona walked into SoFi Stadium as the biggest underdog on the Week 1 board, 9.5 points, and beat the Chargers 26-14. Mike LaFleur wins his first game as a head coach and the whole desert is allowed one good weekend. Enjoy it thoroughly, because the defending champions land Sunday and we are not in a generous mood about the state of our quarterback room.
SEACHICKENS TRIVIA
The expansion Seahawks finally won the first game in franchise history in October 1976. Which team did they beat?
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The Tampa Bay Buccaneers, 13-10 at Tampa Stadium, in a meeting of the league’s two brand-new franchises. Tampa Bay finished that season 0-14 and did not win a game until 1977, so somebody had to lose that one.
THIS DAY IN SEAHAWKS HISTORY
2025
September 14, 2025
Seattle Wins in Pittsburgh, 31-17
One year ago today, the Seahawks went into Pittsburgh and beat the Steelers 31-17 to even their record at 1-1. Sam Darnold threw for 295 yards with two touchdowns and two interceptions, which was the exact shape of that whole season: a little messy, a lot of points, and a win at the end of it. That team finished the year with a banner.
THE GOLDEN EGG
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He had not taken a single practice snap all week. Cooper Kupp confirmed it afterward, which somehow made it worse and better at the same time. Darnold went down on the opening drive and Lock walked into a Super Bowl rematch cold, in front of a crowd that had just watched a banner go up, and went 16 of 22 for 187 yards with a 45-yard touchdown to Jaxon Smith-Njigba.
Backup quarterback is the only job in professional sports where you prepare all week for a thing that probably will not happen, and then it happens on national television with no warning. Lock has now done it well enough that the front office is not returning calls about veteran replacements. The egg is his.
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Completions
187
Passing Yards
1
Touchdown
Send Us Your Questions
Eleven days between games means eleven days of you overthinking the quarterback room. Put it in writing instead. Best questions get answered, worst questions get answered more enthusiastically.
Back to work this afternoon. Finally. — The Rooster