Drew Lock has been dealing with an elbow injury, but he says it’s not impacting him as he readies to start against the Cardinals on Sunday.
While the Seahawks listed Lock as a limited participant on Wednesday’s injury report, he said his elbow is doing “a lot better.”
“It’s doing good, doing good,” Lock said in his Thursday press conference. “I’m excited to be back out there. It felt great to get under center and rip some balls yesterday. So, it feels good.”
Lock told reporters that he’s looking at his participation for the next few days “like a normal week.”
“If the training staff wants to pull it back a little bit, then let them make that decision,” Lock said. “But I’m expecting to go take every rep.”
Lock is set to start for Sam Darnold, who is week-to-week with a quad injury. Darnold also played through a cracked rib on Monday night. He has already been ruled out for this week and didn’t practice on Wednesday.
Lock had to fill in for an injured Darnold in Week 1, completing 16-of-22 passes in that game for 187 yards with a touchdown. He then beat the Cardinals in Week 2, completing 19-of-26 for 235 yards with three touchdowns and no interceptions in a 31-7 win.
Seahawks Clips
Bill Belichick fell short of the necessary votes to be elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2026, but he may have another chance in 2027.
The Hall of Fame announced the five coaches who have advanced to the next round of consideration in the current selection process. One of those coaches will be selected for consideration by the full selection committee ahead of the Super Bowl.
Belichick is joined by Tom Coughlin, Mike Holmgren, Dan Reeves, and Mike Shanahan. All five coaches also advanced to this point in the selection process last year. This is the fourth time that Holmgren has advanced to this point.
Don Coryell was the last coach selected for the Hall of Fame. He was part of the Class of 2023.
Seattle’s QB1 for Week 9 is in flux.
Quarterback Sam Darnold will not play in Sunday’s game against the Cardinals after suffering a quad injury late in Monday’s loss to the Bears, Seahawks head coach Mike Macdonald announced in his Wednesday press conference.
“It’ll be week-to-week for Sam,” Macdonald said. “He’s not going to go on IR.”
Macdonald noted the club intends to start Drew Lock on Sunday, but he’s also working through an injury.
“The plan is for Drew to start. Jalen [Milroe] will be ready to back up,” Macdonald said. “Drew’s still working back from his elbow, so we’ll work through that process this week. So we’ll be getting both guys ready to play. Have full confidence in those guys and we have a plan in place and we’ll go execute.”
Lock finished the Week 1 win over the Patriots and started Week 2 when the Seahawks beat the Cardinals in Arizona. He’s completed 35-of-48 passes this year for 422 yards with four touchdowns and no interceptions.
“He’s able to throw. How much, we’re working through that right now. That’s the best way to put it,” Macdonald said of Lock’s elbow injury. “He’s going to throw the ball throughout the week, but we’re just going to manage it. He’s not going to take 8,000 throws.”
Lock and Milroe are set to split reps at least early in the practice week.
“I think we just have to take it day-by-day at this point,” Macdonald said.
While Macdonald characterized Darnold as week-to-week with the quad injury, the quarterback is also dealing with another issue.
“In terms of Sam, this guy, he’s tough as nails,” Macdonald said. “I think the second play of the game, I just asked if I could share this, but he cracked his rib on the second play of the game. So, playing the whole game without even making a name of it, and playing his tail off, and competing, it’s worth noting how tough this guy is. He’ll be back sooner than later, I’m sure.”
Darnold has completed 60.2 percent of his passes this season for 1,478 yards with 10 touchdowns and nine interceptions so far this season.
Seattle’s first injury report of the week will be out later on Wednesday.
After Monday night’s loss to the Bears, Seahawks head coach Mike Macdonald said that his team was beaten in all three phases of the game and he revisited that line of thinking on Tuesday.
During an appearance on Seattle Sports 710, Macdonald said that there’s an “itch to say” what needs to change about the team as they work to move forward from both the loss and the 4-4 start to their Super Bowl title defense. Macdonald then pivoted to suggesting “a deep breath” and a recentering of the things that propelled the Seahawks to success in the past rather than reaching for things to tweak across the board.
“If we’re going to go out, we want to go out in our way and our style, and that wasn’t us, or the best version of us at least,” Macdonald said, via the team’s website. “So that’s why I think it’s so tough. We have to focus on recapturing us and making sure that we’re us when we turn the tape on. There were too many times throughout that game where that wasn’t us in terms of just our style of ball. That’s where we need to get better.”
A home game against the Cardinals will be this week’s opportunity to double down on the kind of recentering that Macdonald is talking about and getting that in place in time for the Seahawks to finish strong appears to be the path Macdonald is charting in Seattle.
Let Russ coach.
Former NFL quarterback Russell Wilson, who’s in his first year as a member of The NFL Today on CBS, is exploring a possible Saturday gig.
Via Adam Schefter of ESPN, Wilson interviewed on Tuesday for the head-coaching vacancy at NC State.
Wilson spent four years at NC State, from 2007 through 2010, before transferring to Wisconsin after the Wolfpack opted to go with Mike Glennon for 2011.
The 10-time Pro Bowler has no coaching experience. The reported favorite for the job, former NFL and NC State quarterback Philip Rivers, has high-school coaching experience only.
If nothing else, the interview puts Wilson on the radar screen for other coaching jobs, at the college and pro level. His potential aspirations to coach were not, before now, widely known.
When the schedule is released every May, plenty of standalone games that look good at the time morph into something not quite as appetizing as the season unfolds. Some standalone games get better with time.
This year, there’s a trio of massive games lurking on Christmas Day.
At 1:00 p.m. ET, it’s the Packers at the Bears. At 4:30 p.m. ET, it’s the Bills at the Broncos. At 8:15 p.m., it’s the Rams at the Seahawks.
With the Bears emerging as a threat to win the NFC North and the No. 1 seed in the conference, the rematch with their biggest rivals (who beat them 31-7 in Week 5) becomes must-see TV. Bills at Broncos, a rematch of a postseason overtime classic that got Buffalo coach Sean McDermott fired, should have direct implications on two division races and the chase for the lone bye in the AFC.
The nightcap shapes up to be not a battle for the NFC West title and/or the top seed but a potential elimination game, given that both Seattle and L.A. are currently 4-4.
Regardless, all three games should be significant. Impactful. Consequential.
And they’ll more than make up for the Christmas Eve game, which has the 2-5 Texans at the 2-6 Eagles.
Fresh off last week’s trade from the Titans to the Bears, defensive tackle Jeffrey Simmons had a clear impact on Monday night’s win over the Seahawks.
Simmons finished the game with six tackles, two tackles for loss, a sack, and a pass defensed in the 34-17 victory.
Head coach Ben Johnson told reporters after the game that he gave Simmons a game ball or the performance.
“Our guys were excited the moment they heard the news we were bringing him on, and he’s fit right in,” Johnson said. “We have a high-character locker room, and he’s that himself. You can feel his presence out there, whether it’s during the play or even after the play. You can feel him talk a little smack as well which I think that elevates everybody around him.
“I thought he played outstanding. He got one of the game balls. To come in there and have a share of the lead of tackles and a sack in his first game, his impact was profound.”
The Bears allowed just 252 total yards on Monday night, which was 1 yard off from Seattle’s lowest output of the season. The Bears will be at home to play the Buccaneers on Sunday night in Week 9.
Monday night’s game in Seattle featured a pair of 2025 NFC playoff teams who would like to be back in the postseason this year and it ended with the Bears celebrating a 34-17 win over the defending Super Bowl champions.
The Seahawks had made it a three-point game early in the fourth quarter, but a 39-yard screen pass to Kalif Raymond converted a key Bears third down on the next drive and the roof caved in on the Seahawks from there. The Bears ended the night with 111 more offensive yards than the Seahawks and their defense thwarted Seattle on 10 of their 11 third down attempts over the course of the night, which led Seahawks head coach Mike Macdonald to say after the game that “there’s no other way to sugarcoat” the way his team got beat.
Seahawks kicker Jason Myers missed an extra point and had a field goal blocked and the Seahawks committed several personal fouls to add to their woes on a night when the Bears were clearly better across the board.
“They made it happen, and we didn’t,” Macdonald said, via the team’s website. “It’s a team effort; we lost as a team. In all three phases, we can have better plans, we can coach it better, prepare our players better, and we can play better. We’ll go back to work and go attack the heck out of it. The margins in our league are too small, and when you don’t do the things that it takes to win, that’s how a game like that shapes up. It was a team effort. We lost in all three phases.”
The Seahawks overwhelmed the Chiefs in a Week 7 win, but Monday night was the kind of step back that explains why they’re 4-4 on the season. Having it happen against another NFC contender at home makes the blow more painful and Macdonald said the Seahawks “have some work to do” if they’re going to position themselves for another run at the end of this season.
It didn’t take long for Jeffery Simmons to get his first sack as a Bear.
Simmons took Sam Darnold down on the Seahawks’ fourth offensive play on Monday night, and he said afterward that as soon as he saw that they were blocking him one-on-one, he knew a big play was coming.
“If you block me one-on-one, I need to win the one-on-one. If I don’t win a one-on-one, the coaches should be on me. I hold myself to a high standard,” Simmons said. “It felt great to get my first sack as a Chicago Bear in my first game.”
Simmons always drew a lot of double teams during his All-Pro seasons with the Titans, and he drew plenty on Monday night in his first game since the Titans traded him to the Bears as well. He said he challenged his fellow Bears defensive linemen to take advantage of it when he was getting double teamed.
“If I’m getting a double team, I expect them to win their single block,” Simmons said. “We don’t need to blitz. I feel like if we can win at the line of scrimmage without the blitzes, that makes the guys’ jobs on the back end that much easier.”
Simmons played 55 defensive snaps, by far the most of any Bear in the game. He played 87 percent of the Bears’ defensive plays, which was exactly his snap count percentage for the Titans this season before he was traded. The Bears made a big investment in Simmons, trading two first-round draft picks for him, and they got a big return immediately.
In the moments before kickoff, Simmons said he was trying to keep his emotions in check by reminding himself, “It’s just football.” But it was hard not to be emotional.
“The emotions, especially during the national anthem, the emotions were coming and coming,” Simmons said.
Simmons said after the game that it means a lot to him to be playing meaningful football. The Titans are 1-7 and the Bears are 6-2 and Simmons knows the blockbuster trade was an opportunity for him to compete for a Super Bowl.
Welcome to Chicago, Jeffery Simmons.
Simmons had a dominate debut with the Bears, who acquired him from the Titans on Thursday. He made a team-leading six tackles, with a sack, a pass defensed and two tackles for loss, and the Bears limited the Seahawks to 252 yards.
The Bears rolled to a 34-17 victory over the Seahawks on Monday night.
Chicago is 6-2, and the defending champions fell to 4-4.
The Seahawks didn’t help their cause, with three unnecessary roughness penalties in the second half, including two on special teams. Kicker Jason Myers missed an extra point and had a 33-yard field goal blocked.
Sam Darnold threw an interception on a pass tipped by Austin Booker and picked by James Lynch, who returned it 16 yards to the Seattle 6. The Seahawks quarterback was sacked three times and hit six, including a sack and three quarterback hits by defensive lineman Montez Sweat.
Darnold never seemed comfortable against Simmons, Sweat and the Bears defense, as the Seahawks went 1-for-11 on third down.
Star wide receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba kept Seattle in it in the first half and finished with six receptions for 118 yards and a touchdown. Darnold was 17-of-34 for 188 yards with two touchdowns and an interception.
The Seahawks had five three-and-outs and five punts against Dennis Allen’s defense.
The Bears gained 363 yards against the Seahawks vaunted defensive unit, with Caleb Williams going 24-of-34 for 247 yards and a touchdown.
D’Andre Swift had second-half touchdown runs of 1, 5 and 5 and finished with 27 carries for 69 yards.
