One of Seattle’s key defensive players is not yet ready to practice at training camp.
The Seahawks announced on Monday that safety Nick Emmanwori has been placed on the physically unable to perform list.
It’s currently unclear what landed Emmanwori on the PUP list, as he was a participant during the club’s offseason program. But at this time of year, Emmanwori can come off the list to practice at any time.
One of the league’s best defensive rookies last year, Emmanwori tallied 81 total tackles with nine tackles for loss, 2.5 sacks, 11 passes defensed, and an interception in 14 regular-season games in 2025. He added 13 total tackles with four passes defensed and a fumble recovery in Seattle’s three postseason games, helping the club win Super Bowl LX.
Additionally, the Seahawks placed running back Kenny McIntosh and cornerback Tyrone Broden on the PUP list, with both players continuing to recover from injuries suffered during the 2025 season.
Rookie defensive tackle Deeven Eastern was previously placed on the PUP list late last week.
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With the World Cup over, it’s time to remove the grass and reinstall the artificial surface at the various NFL stadiums that play American football on the fake stuff. The NFL Players Association used the World Cup finale to launch a P.R. campaign for grass in all stadiums.
As explained over the weekend, it won’t work. But there’s perhaps a better way to use public pressure to force change.
Do it one team at a time.
The best place to start is Seattle. Vinod Khosla will be buying the team, if the transaction is approved by enough of the other owners next month. And Khosla will be getting his feet wet on a big stage, along with his wife, Neeru, who will be the controlling owner.
Instead of taking general aim at the league at large for grass over turf, the union should focus on Seattle. Take out the turf, put in the grass. Like they did for the World Cup.
If the players are serious about pushing the issue, push it hard. Push until the Seahawks’ new management opts to switch to grass.
Then, pick another team. Or teams. Changing to grass at SoFi Stadium or MetLife Stadium would cover 20 games per year.
It won’t be easy. Now that it’s a CBA issue, the NFL’s owners will want the teams that have turf to hold the rope. And it would be awkward for Khosla, as the new kid on the block, to defy the unspoken desire to force the players to bargain for grass.
Still, owners either care about their players, or they don’t. They either want to give them the surface they strongly prefer, or they don’t. They either understand that playing on grass entails less overall wear and tear on the human body, or they don’t.
Making it a general assault keeps any one owner from feeling the heat. Focusing it on one owner at a time makes it hard for that owner to hide.
If the NFLPA wants grass, that’s the way to do it. Start publicly pushing Vinod and Neeru Khosla to remove the turf from Lumen Field and install grass.
Seahawks left guard Grey Zabel got to see plenty of the Rams during his rookie season.
The two NFC West clubs faced off three times last season, including a matchup in the NFC Championship Game that the Seahawks won en route to their Super Bowl title. During an appearance on the Green Light with Chris Long podcast, Zabel called that game “a heavyweight boxing match” and said that he came out of the year with both a healthy dislike and a healthy respect for their divisional rival.
“I hate the Rams, but I love the Rams because it is mano a mano, best on best,” Zabel said. “They know us well, we know them well. You’re just sitting there trying to win every single rep. When they’re calling out plays, we can tell what they’re doing based off the defensive scheme, it’s fun football.”
Zabel said Rams defensive tackle Kobie Turner was his “kryptonite” last season and the Rams tried to make things even tougher on the Seahawks by trading for Myles Garrett this offseason. They could also get Aaron Donald back up front if he comes out of retirement to make things even more interesting in the NFC West this season.
It’s been known since March that the Seahawks will be the preseason Hard Knocks team for 2026 — and that the Patriots will finally take their Hard Knocks turn in 2027.
It’s not yet known which teams will take center stage for in-season Hard Knocks.
In 2024, the in-season version expanded its focus from one team to a full division, in part to dilute the competitive impact of the intrusion during a time when the games count. The first year, the series tracked the teams of the AFC North. Last year, it was the NFC East.
This year, there’s been no announcement yet. The 2025 teams were announced in May. In 2024, the NFL disclosed the division in June.
We’ve made multiple attempts over the past week to get an answer as to when the teams will be known. To date, there’s no indication as to when the division will be disclosed — or if there will even be an in-season Hard Knocks in 2026.
There are three potential explanations for the silence. One, they’ve decided not to announce the division in advance. Two, they’ve yet to pick the division. Three, they’ve decided not to do it at all.
The in-season version gets easily lost in the shuffle, especially as the league shuffles around its schedule to maximize standalone windows. With games to watch on Thursdays, Sundays, Mondays, and (this year) multiple Wednesdays and multiple Fridays, would enough people watch a weekly look at four different teams?
If it happens this year, the practical options are down to four divisions. With a team from the NFC West serving as the focal point for Hard Knocks this year and a team from the AFC East doing it next year, those two divisions presumably aren’t in play.
That leaves the AFC South, the AFC West, the NFC North, or the NFC South.
Or maybe the plug has quietly been pulled on the whole thing. If shifting to a full division was aimed at avoiding putting one team at a disadvantage in its own division, the full division ends up at a disadvantage in comparison to the other teams in the conference with which the Hard Knocks teams are competing for wild-card berths and playoff positioning. (Especially if the league is moving toward a new seeding structure that doesn’t guarantee a home game for a division winner, which is expected to happen when the season expands to 18 games.)
Maybe, just like the offseason version of Hard Knocks (which was so revealing and compelling when the Giants did it in 2024 that no one else will do it), Hard Knocks will be reverting to a preseason exercise only.
There’s another possible outcome, in our view. In lieu of rolling out the in-season Hard Knocks episodes during the season, maybe the time to unveil the series will be the upcoming offseason. It doesn’t hurt the Quarterback series that the show arrives months after the prior season ended, when there’s nothing else going on for NFL fans to consume.
Frankly, the best approach would be to capture the raw audio and video as to all teams, and to decide after the season ends which division provides the most interesting subject for the series. Or, if the cameras and microphones will be present for all teams, why not put together an in-season series that looks at the most interesting moments from the full league?
However it goes, it’s an NFL decision and not an ESPN call. NFL Films remained with the NFL after the ESPN merger with NFL Media.
For the NFL, the ultimate business decision could come down to whether it makes business sense to not do in-season Hard Knocks at all — or whether it makes more sense to embrace a more ambitious project that entails getting footage from 32 teams and editing an after-the-fact Hard Knocks that could have much more appeal than focusing on one division, while also eliminating any concerns about competitive disadvantage.
Last Saturday, the Paul G. Allen Estate announced that the Seahawks will be sold (pending approval) to a group led by venture capitalist Vinod Khosla.
The bidding between the two finalists was extremely close.
Per a source with knowledge of the situation, the process eventually consisted of Khosla’s group and the group led by Celtics limited partner Aditya Mittal going back and forth, like an auction. One side would one-up the other, and the other would raise the stakes higher.
The process ended with Khosla’s group bidding $9.612 billion.
There was another factor that helped the bid from Khosla’s group win the competition. The source says that Khosla’s plan to make his wife, Neeru, the controlling owner appealed to Jody Allen, the sister of Paul Allen who has been running the team following his passing in 2018.
We posed the question to a spokesperson for the Paul G. Allen Estate regarding whether the decision to delegate the main ownership role to Neeru Khosla was a factor in the outcome of the process. In response, the spokesperson had “nothing to share beyond the statement we released last week about reaching a sale agreement with the Khosla family.”
Every team must identify a single controlling owner who holds the power to cast any and all votes on league matters. Every year, each controlling owner must identify the person who would replace the controlling owner in the event of death or incapacitation.
It’s an important aspect of NFL ownership. The league wants to know, with specificity, who will have the power to cast votes on the various issues that are presented to the full membership at the four quarterly meetings, and at any special meetings.
The Seahawks placed rookie defensive tackle Deven Eastern on the active/physically unable to perform list, the team announced Saturday.
Eastern, 23, missed much of the offseason program with an unspecified injury.
The Seahawks can activate Eastern back to the 90-player roster as soon as he passes his physical.
Seattle made Eastern a seventh-round pick in the 2026 draft. The University of Minnesota product totaled 12 tackles for loss, 4.5 sacks and two forced fumbles in 45 games over four seasons, including five tackles for loss, 2.5 sacks and a forced fumble in 13 games last season.
He joins a crowded room that includes Leonard Williams, Byron Murphy II, Jarran Reed, Rylie Mills and Brandon Pili.
When the Seahawks’ rookies reported to training camp on Friday, the highest-profile player in the group was first-round running back Jadarian Price, who projects to have a very big role as a rookie.
Price will obviously get a lot of carries after last year’s leading rusher, Kenneth Walker, left Seattle in free agency, and last year’s second-leading rusher, Zach Charbonnet, suffered a torn ACL in the divisional round of the playoffs. But Seahawks head coach Mike Macdonald said Price will contribute more than just running the ball.
“We’re going to run wide zone and he’s going to run wide zone,” Macdonald said, via Seahawks.com. “We’re going to run some gap scheme. He’s going to run some of that too and then the pass game he can come alive, too. I think that’s part of our offense in general, that we can take another step in including our halfbacks in the pass game. Then, he’s a great special teams player as well. The kick return stuff, we’ll see how it shakes out in other phases, but he’s going to come in and compete with the rest of the guys.”
NFL teams rarely make their starting running back a kick returner, but Price was a big-play kickoff returner at Notre Dame, returning 22 kickoffs for 794 yards (an average of 36.1 yards per return) and three touchdowns. The Seahawks believe Price will make a lot of plays with the ball in his hands, and they want to give him every opportunity to have the ball in his hands.
The legalization of sports betting provides an extra boost to already rocketing NFL franchise values. It sparked concerns that, in time, the NFL may have to rethink its rules for franchise ownership.
As explained by Ben Fischer of Sports Business Journal, the sale of the Seattle Seahawks has not brought those concerns to fruition.
Even with the prior record price shattered by more than 50 percent, with $6.05 billion in 2023 for the Commanders spiking to $9.612 million for the Seahawks only three years later, they still found a buyer that won’t require the current rules to be modified.
Fischer reports that the group led by venture capitalist Vinod Khosla presents “no need for policy waivers or an unwieldy number of limited partners.” While the full membership is still coming together, Fischer reports that it is a “tidy” number.
Increasing franchise values have yet to create problems for the league because, as an unnamed source told Fischer, “There are so many fucking billionaires.”
That includes people who can come up with 30 percent of the full price (for Khosla, that’s $2.88 billion) and limited partners who’ll kick in multiple hundred million without blinking.
Allowing pre-approved private equity funds to buy 10 percent of a team has helped, as has increased debt limits. Still, if the values keep going up and up (and up), there will be a time when it will be very hard to find someone who can write a check for 30 percent of the amount — and who will.
The first NFL training camp for the 2026 season will officially open today.
The Seahawks’ rookies will report to training camp today, making Seattle’s rookies the first players in the league to report. As is customary for the defending Super Bowl champions, the Seahawks play at home in the first game of the regular season, and they’re getting an early start on camp. Seattle hosts New England in a Super Bowl rematch on Wednesday, September 9, to begin the 2026 season.
Tomorrow the 49ers’ rookies report. Then the next wave of reports comes on Tuesday, when the Bills, Panthers, Texans, Dolphins and Patriots all welcome their rookies to camp.
The Panthers and Cardinals will be the first teams to have their whole squads in training camp, with both of them having veterans in camp on Wednesday, July 22. The Panthers face the Cardinals in the first preseason game, the Hall of Fame Game on August 6.
Most teams’ veterans will report on July 28, the date on which every NFL team will have its full squad in camp.
Repeating as Super Bowl champions is a tough task for any team, so the Seahawks would face a daunting path under any circumstances this season.
Their circumstances are all the more daunting because of the makeup of their division. They had to go through the 49ers and the Rams in the playoffs last season and both teams have made moves to strengthen their rosters since they were eliminated in January.
The 49ers added wideouts Mike Evans and Christian Kirk on offense, traded for defensive lineman Osa Odighizuwa and brought back linebacker Dre Greenlaw. The Rams opened the offseason by acquiring cornerbacks Trent McDuffie and Jaylen Watson, and then pulled off a blockbuster trade for Myles Garrett last month. They could also have defensive tackle Aaron Donald back from retirement, but Seahawks head coach Mike Macdonald said that he’s not spending much time thinking about what his team’s rivals are doing.
“Yeah, I don’t care,” Macdonald said, via Vic Tafur of TheAthletic.com. “Don’t care. If you start worrying about what everybody else is doing, it’s just mentally taxing. It’s so much easier if you don’t. Let’s just worry about the Seahawks and being the best version of ourselves and getting better every day.”
The Seahawks will turn their attention toward the 49ers in Week 5, but their two games against the Rams don’t come until the final three weeks of the regular season so there will be plenty of other things for Macdonald to focus on before he settles on the club from Los Angeles.
