Seahawks safety Julian Love returned to practice on Wednesday. He was a limited participant.
Love strained a calf muscle at Thursday’s practice and missed Sunday’s loss to the Commanders.
He has two interceptions in two games.
The Seahawks practiced without safety Ty Okada (hamstring).
Running back George Holani (rib), running back Jadarian Price (chest), defensive tackle Jarran Reed (foot), defensive tackle Leonard Williams (rest) and guard Grey Zabel (groin) were limited.
Wide receiver Rashid Shaheed (hip), defensive tackle Brandon Pili (neck) and safety Nick Emmanwori (ankle) were full participants.
Before the 2024 draft, former Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh had plenty of glowing things to say about former Michigan quarterback J.J. McCarthy.
So it’s no surprise that Jim Harbaugh had many positive things to say about McCarthy to Harbaugh’s brother, John, before John’s Giants traded for McCarthy.
“I mean, John called me and asked me,” Harbaugh told reporters on Wednesday. “I said, you know, John, I love you. I love J.J. I think you guys would be . . .’ so, really, I’m telling you the same thing that I told my brother.”
For whatever reason, things didn’t work for McCarthy in Minnesota. But they worked for McCarthy in Michigan. Maybe McCarthy responds better to the Harbaugh rah-rah style. Maybe McCarthy’s second act with the Giants will go better than his first NFL stint.
However it goes, McCarthy needed a fresh start. And playing for Jim Harbaugh’s brother may be the next best thing to playing for Jim Harbaugh.
The Chargers offense ranks 20th, and quarterback Justin Herbert has three touchdowns and four interceptions and his passer rating of 73.4 ranks 26th. Los Angeles has more turnovers (six) than touchdowns (five) as a team.
Coach Jim Harbaugh said he has not considered taking control from offensive coordinator Mike McDaniel.
“No, we trust Mike. We believe in Mike,” Harbaugh said, via Austin Knoblauch of the Los Angeles Times.
It’s not like Harbaugh has any other option but to publicly give McDaniel a vote of confidence and hope the former Dolphins head coach can fix it.
Harbaugh hired McDaniel this offseason to add a dynamic element to the offense, which hasn’t happened yet.
While Harbaugh issued his first public criticism of Herbert, saying Monday that Herbert needs “to be better” in his decision-making, the head coach hasn’t done the same with McDaniel.
“We’re searching for every possible way to give ourselves an advantage,” Harbaugh said. “Every possible way to not beat ourselves.”
In his postgame comments, Herbert pushed back against the idea that McDaniel’s scheme is too complex.
“He’s definitely a guy that we need to lean on; he’s done such an incredible job,” Herbert said, via Jonah Bronstein of the Associated Press. “It’s on us as an offense to run the plays the way he sees them, listen to coaching, and do our job to make those plays. And we haven’t done that for him. So obviously, we feel horrible.”
The Vikings have scrapped the J.J. McCarthy experience after the 2024 first-round pick made only 10 starts in two-plus seasons.
That adds McCarthy to a short list of first-round quarterbacks who, for whatever reason, didn’t last very long with the teams that drafted them.
Via Kevin Seifert of ESPN, Elias Sports Bureau identifies only four first-round quarterbacks in the past 25 years who started 10 or fewer games for the team that picked them.
Paxton Lynch, the 2016 first-round pick of the Broncos, started only four games in Denver. He never played in a regular-season game for any other team.
Trey Lance, for whom the 49ers traded up in 2021 to make the third overall selection, started only four games in San Francisco. (He has since made eight appearances with two starts for the Cowboys and Chargers.)
Johnny Manziel, a first-round pick of the Browns in 2014, started eight games in Cleveland. He never played for another NFL team.
McCarthy had exactly 10 starts with the Vikings. He won six of them. But the Vikings have opted to take a fifth-round pick in order to move on from him.
While it’s far less than the first-round pick plus more that they gave up to get him, it’s more than what they would have gotten if he’d been cut before the start of the 2026 season. Which seemed to be a real possibility in late August, especially after he slipped to third on the depth chart.
Either way, the Vikings pulled the plug. And now they’ll have to hope that McCarthy doesn’t become the latest second-act (or third-act) quarterback who becomes a star for someone else.
Sure, the Vikings would never say it out loud. They don’t need to. They know that the only thing that will make their McCarthy misadventures worse will be watching him become for someone else what the Vikings hoped he would be.
The coach who not long ago said Chargers quarterback Justin Herbert will be remembered as the best quarterback in NFL history wants him to be better.
Via Kris Rhim on ESPN, Jim Harbaugh offered a public critique of Herbert’s decision-making to date in 2026.
“Be better,” Harbaugh told reporters. “Be better. And that drives Justin, that drives me, that drives his position coach, that drives Mike [McDaniel], the [offensive] coordinator. I mean, drives us all.”
With three losses in three games, Harbaugh’s not wrong.
“We want to be better,” Harbaugh said. “We got to be better. We got to look at our scheme. We got to look at how we’re performing, how we’re doing things and who’s doing it.”
In Sunday’s loss to the Bills, which included a blown 10-0 lead, Herbert completed 20 of 34 passes for 226 yards, one touchdown, and one interception. His passer rating for the season is a career-low (by far) 73.4. (Herbert’s full-season low point in passer rating is 93.2.)
Here’s a theory about the current issues in L.A. With all the talk about the Oscar Madison/Felix Unger vibe between Harbaugh and McDaniel, there has been little scrutiny of the relationship between Herbert and McDaniel.
McDaniel is verbose and quirky. Herbert is quiet and no-nonsense. It’s entirely possible that the personalities don’t mesh, and that this has kept them from working together the way they could.
As the Chargers stare at a possible 0-6 start (they play the Seahawks, Broncos, and Chiefs before a Week 7 bye), the situation bears watching. Something’s off for the Chargers’ offense, and the biggest difference is that the Chargers fired offensive coordinator Greg Roman and replaced him with McDaniel.
