Training Camp thread
Re: Training Camp thread
10 Rookies Steals in the draft. I am thinking about a 25% chance he starts this season. Prob high. But 90% next season.
Beau Stephens, IOL, Seattle Seahawks (Round 5, No. 148)
Beau Stephens is another backup lineman with a clear pathway to being a sophomore starter. The Seattle Seahawks have starting right guard Anthony Bradford on an expiring contract. They probably won't re-sign Bradford, considering they've tried replacing him for years. First they drafted Christian Haynes, who failed to seize his opportunity in a position battle. Attention is shifting to Stephens, who understands the importance of angles in a zone-blocking scheme.
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Donn Beach
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Re: Training Camp thread
So the Rams are the favs doing it their way but we don't have that option? Damn I hope you are right about Stafford. Our 29 yo is almost dead from playing baseball but I bet Stafford doesn't miss a down even though he is a decade older.
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Re: Training Camp thread
Sam Darnold has missed a total of 24 regular-season games due to injuries throughout his NFL career.A breakdown of his time missed from injuries by season includes:2018 (New York Jets): Missed 3 games due to a foot injury.2019 (New York Jets): Missed 3 games after being diagnosed with mononucleosis.2020 (New York Jets): Missed 4 games due to a shoulder injury.2021 (Carolina Panthers): Missed 5 games due to a fractured scapula in his right shoulder.2022 (Carolina Panthers): Missed the first 5 games of the season recovering from an ankle injury sustained in the preseason.2023–2026: Missed no regular-season games due to injury across his stints with the 49ers, Vikings, and Seahawks.
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Re: Training Camp thread
By Bob Condotta
Seattle Times staff reporter
The last time the Seahawks gathered on the field for a game, they were celebrating the second Super Bowl win in the franchise’s 50-year history.
The last time they gathered as a team they were collecting one of their biggest rewards for that accomplishment — their Super Bowl rings in a private ceremony June 11.
In keeping with the unofficial motto that the acronym NFL means “not for long,” the Seahawks will have no choice but to put last season aside and begin moving on when training camp begins next weekend.
All players report Friday (rookies reported this past Friday) with the first practice at 1 p.m. Saturday at the VMAC in Renton.
That will be the first of 10 training camp practices open to the public as the Seahawks attempt to become the 10th team to repeat as Super Bowl champs.
As camp kicks off, here are five storylines to watch.
When will Devon Witherspoon sign a new deal?
Aside from finalizing the sale of the team — which it appears likely to go fairly smoothly — the biggest news of camp from a personnel standpoint figures to be signing Devon Witherspoon to a new deal that could make him the highest-paid cornerback in NFL history.
Witherspoon has two years remaining on his contract after the Seahawks exercised an option in March for the 2027 season.
The expectation has been that the Seahawks will sign Witherspoon to a long-term extension, as they also did with receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba.
Some might wonder whether the pending ownership change from the Paul G. Allen Estate to the Khosla family might impact the timeline. The Seahawks, though, have said they are operating “business as usual” during the transition and the contract for Smith-Njigba — who became the highest-paid receiver in NFL history at $42.15 million a season — seemed proof that is indeed the case.
One other potential complication is that New England’s Christian Gonzalez is in the same situation (2023 first-round pick who also had his 2027 option picked up), has the same representation as Witherspoon and is looking for a long-term extension.
That nothing has gotten done with Witherspoon isn’t out of the ordinary — the Seahawks often complete extensions just as camp begins or shortly into it.
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Each side undoubtedly hopes the wait doesn’t linger.
Who will emerge as RB1?
It might be the influence of fantasy football that has focused so much attention on the battle at running back to replace the departed Kenneth Walker III, who after winning Super Bowl MVP honors signed a three-year deal worth almost $15 million a year with the Kansas City Chiefs.
The Seahawks seem confident they will replace his production with a combination of first-round pick Jadarian Price, third-year player George Holani and free-agent signee Emmanuel Wilson while Zach Charbonnet recovers from an ACL injury suffered in the playoff win over the 49ers on Jan. 18.
It figures to become clearer once camp begins when Charbonnet might be back, but the expectation seems to remain that mid- to late October might be a best-case scenario.
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That the Seahawks spent the 32nd overall pick on Price leads to the easy conclusion he will emerge as the starter by the time the regular season begins Sept. 9 against the New England Patriots.
Maybe to take some of the pressure off Price, the Seahawks might ease him into that role as camp begins, while stressing that everything must be earned — especially on the defending Super Bowl champions.
Holani and Wilson figure to have roles as well, with Holani seeming a good fit for the third-down role (which he essentially held in the NFC title game and Super Bowl after Charbonnet’s injury).
A by-committee approach wouldn’t make it easy for fantasy players come draft time.
More important to the Seahawks is finding an approach that allows them to replicate — if not improve — a ground game that, after some fits and starts last season, gained the 10th-most yards in the NFL, though doing so with the 25th best yards-per-attempt average (4.1).
What can Jaxon Smith-Njigba do for an encore?
Jaxon Smith-Njigba’s 1,793 receiving yards last season were the eighth-most in NFL history and he did so at just 23 years old — the second-youngest player on the list of the top 10 receiving seasons in league history.
History shows it won’t be easy to top that number — each of the top 14 receiving seasons in NFL history is by a different player.
Rams Hall of Fame receiver Isaac Bruce, for instance, recorded 1,781 yards in 1995 at the age of 23, at the time the second-best season in league history.
His next best season was 1,471 yards — still darn good, but proof that historic seasons can be hard to match or top.
The offseason has also been filled with speculation that the Seahawks will get the ball more to Rashid Shaheed while trying to get their tight ends even more involved. They are also hoping for more out of second-year players Tory Horton and Elijah Arroyo and are trying to also get more out of the running game.
Opposing defenses figure to try even harder to contain Smith-Njigba and make the rest of the offense beat them.
Another 1,800-yard season for Smith-Njigba doesn’t figure to come easily, but after last year you’d obviously be taking a risk to bet against him.
How will the competition in the secondary shake out?
Two spots in the Seahawks’ secondary remain up for grabs — the starting safety position held last year by Coby Bryant (who signed with the Bears as a free agent) and the third cornerback spot held by Riq Woolen (who signed with the Eagles).
The Seahawks drafted safety Bud Clark in the second round as a potential replacement for Bryant.
Ty Okada — who started 11 games last year when Bryant or Julian Love were injured — held the other starting spot opposite Love during the offseason program, and they signed free-agent Rodney Thomas II as competition.
They also drafted Julian Neal in the third round as a potential third cornerback. But third-year player Nehemiah Pritchett and free-agent signee Noah Igbinoghene could factor in.
The smart money is on Clark and Neal eventually emerging as the long-term answers at each spot. But as with Price and the running-back position, the Seahawks figure to make the rookies earn it.
How will the Seahawks deal with life in the spotlight?
Training camp begins not only with the rest of the league aiming for the Seahawks but also a phalanx of camera crews from the NFL Films-produced weekly HBO documentary “Hard Knocks.”
The first episode won’t air until Aug. 11, or roughly 2 1/2 weeks into camp.
But the cameras and attention will be there from the first snap.
Coach Mike Macdonald has already set the template for how the Seahawks are going to approach it with this comment from May: “It’s like, OK, it’s coming. Make the best of it. It will be fun.”
Macdonald took a similar stance toward the increased attention the team received during Super Bowl week, and the Seahawks appeared to weather that just fine if the score of the game is any indication.
The guess here is there will be a lot more speculation about the impact of distractions for the Seahawks then there will be any actual distractions.
And for those worried about it, the good news is the added cameras will leave in early September and won’t be back for quite some time.
Note
— Rookie nose tackle Deven Eastern, a seventh-round pick out of Minnesota, was placed on the physically unable to perform list Saturday, a day after rookies reported. Eastern sat out much of the last few weeks of the offseason program in the spring with an undisclosed injury. Players can come off the PUP list anytime during the preseason once they pass a physical.
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