The Seahawks are taking a look at a former first-round pick for their defense.
Dante Fowler visited with Seattle on Thursday, according to the league’s transaction wire.
Fowler, 31, spent last season with the Cowboys, appearing in all 17 games with 11 starts. He finished the year with 3.0 sacks, four tackles for loss, and 10 quarterback hits.
Fowler has been quite durable recently, playing all 17 games in each of the last four seasons.
In 159 career games with 58 starts for the Jaguars, Rams, Falcons, Cowboys, and Commanders, Fowler has registered 58.5 career sacks with 74 tackles for loss and 97 QB hits.
Seahawks Clips
The NFL has announced the names of the current and former players that will take part in next week’s draft by announcing second-round picks.
The list includes players associated with all 32 teams, including Cardinals running back James Conner. Conner has strong ties to the Pittsburgh area after playing for the Steelers and attending Pitt, which likely made him an easy choice as the Cardinals’ representative.
Former Bears tackle Jimbo Covert, former Cowboys running back Tony Dorsett, former Chiefs defensive lineman Bill Maas, current Vikings tackle Brian O’Neill, former Jets running back Curtis Martin, and former 49ers punter Andy Lee are other Pitt alums who are set to take part.
The hometown team will be represented by four players. Former Steelers Jerome Bettis and John Stallworth will be joined by Joey Porter Sr. and Jr. next Friday.
The other players taking part and their team affiliations appear below:
Falcons: Michael Turner
Ravens: Mark Ingram
Bills: Shane Conlan
Panthers: Jake Delhomme
Bengals: Ken Anderson
Browns: Phil Dawson
Cowboys: Drew Pearson
Broncos: T.J. Ward
Lions: Calvin Johnson
Packers: John Kuhn
Texans: Billy Miller
Colts: Pat McAfee
Jaguars: Paul Posluszny
Raiders: Matt Millen
Chargers: Shawne Merriman
Rams: Tavon Austin
Dolphins: Dwight Stephenson
Patriots: Deion Branch
Saints: Marques Colston
Giants: Osi Umenyiora
Eagles: Brian Westbrook
Seahawks: Cliff Avril
Buccaneers: Ronde Barber
Titans: Jeffery Simmons
Commanders: Mark Rypien
Cornerback Brandon Cisse is among the prospects making the rounds with the draft a little over two weeks away.
Jordan Reid of ESPN.com reports that Cisse recently visited with the Cowboys. He’s also set to meet with the Seahawks.
Cisse played two seasons at North Carolina State before transferring to South Carolina for the 2025 season. He had 27 tackles, 1.5 tackles for loss and an interception while building a profile that has led many to project him as a second-day pick this year.
The Cowboys signed Cobie Durant to go with Shavon Revel, DaRon Bland and Caelen Carson at corner. The Seahawks parted ways with Riq Woolen this offseason, but the Super Bowl champs have Devon Witherspoon and Josh Jobe set to return.
In many ways, the all-access, all-the-time NFL has evolved past Hard Knocks. But the annual infomercial masquerading as a documentary persists.
This year, the league broke new ground by announcing not only this year’s team that will be the focal point of the series but next year’s, too.
Via Sam Neumann of Awful Announcing, Adam Schefter of ESPN recently explained that the decision to lock in the next two seasons of preseason Hard Knocks resulted from the fact that teams often say “next year” when asked to serve as the subject of the show.
This year, the NFL reacted to the Patriots saying “next year” by saying, “Sold!”
That’s obviously not the best way to program the series. If the league wanted to revive the box-checking project that (if nothing else) keeps HBO in line as to any content the NFL may not like (a new-age Playmakers would be awesome), it would decide that no one can ever say “no” — and that the assignment would be determined based primarily if not exclusively on the question of which team will create the most interest in any given August.
Of course, this assumes (ass, you, me) that the NFL and its teams have genuine interest in giving the fans truly interesting content. The best Hard Knocks run in years came from the Giants in the 2024 offseason. But the reality show was a little too real for Big Blue, making it impossible for any other team to volunteer to have its building invaded by cameras and microphones for offseason strategizing that could become more than a little embarrassing.
It all comes down to what the NFL wants Hard Knocks to be. For now, it’s a perfunctory “wish you were here” postcard from camp, with far more style than substance.
Take 2026, for example. The Seahawks have just won the Super Bowl. There’s no drama. No tension. No awkward camp battles or contract issues or hot seats or anything that will make Hard Knocks must-see TV. Ernest Jones IV saying “fuck you” to the doubters will eventually stop packing much of a punch, especially as the list of doubters shrinks.
For the Seahawks, the biggest question is whether they can become the first team to win back-to-back Super Bowls since the 2022-23 Chiefs. That’s hardly compelling content.
(That said, if the Seahawks have a brash and dynamic new owner by August who is intent on fixing what isn’t broken, that would be worth the price of subscription. Assuming that angle would even be covered by Hard Knocks.)
Other than hardcore Seahawks fans who crave anything Seahawks-related they can find, will anyone be interested in an inside look at the Super Bowl LX champs?
Give us the Eagles, who seem to be at a six-way intersection of crossroads and who have plenty of compelling personalities (starting with Big Dom). Give us the 49ers, who are openly salty about being tapped for the Week 1 game against the Rams in Australia — and who’ll train in the shadow of an electrical substation that has prompted many players to wonder whether it contributes to injuries.
Give us the Jets, where Geno Smith is back and the pressure is on head coach Aaron Glenn. Give us the Bills, where the clock is ticking on Josh Allen’s prime and a new coach is trying to pick up where Sean McDermott left off. Give us the Ravens, where Lamar Jackson has a new head coach and offensive coordinator and (for now) no new contract.
Give us the Giants, where John Harbaugh is coaching a new team for the first time since 2008. Give us the Chargers, where Jim Harbaugh has hired Mike McDaniel to get the most out of Justin Herbert.
Give us the Dolphins, where Jeff Hafley is trying to turn the page on a team that can’t perform in the cold. Give us the Steelers, where Mike McCarthy and Aaron Rodgers may be together again.
Give us the Browns, where Shedeur Sanders and Deshaun Watson apparently will be battling for the starting job. Give us the Vikings, where Kyler Murray and J.J. McCarthy absolutely will be.
Give us the Lions, who are trying both to rediscover their edge and to show that Dan Campbell’s message after the 2023 NFC Championship (“this may have been our only shot”) was less Nostradamus than Knute Rockne. Give us the Bengals, where Joe Burrow seems to be thinking seriously about whether he’ll ever get the most out of his skills and abilities. Give us the Packers, where Matt LaFleur has resolved to improve communications with his players. Give us the Bears, where Ben Johnson will be constantly having something to say about Matt LaFleur, and where George Gervin may decide to stop by.
Give us the Raiders, where Kirk Cousins is the veteran and Fernando Mendoza will be learning the ropes and Tom Brady possibly will make a cameo appearance, if he can fit it into his schedule. Give us the Cowboys, where Jerry Jones inevitably will repeat his obsession with “gloryhole,” possibly while receiver George Pickens is holding out.
Basically, give us something good. Something compelling. Something that will make Hard Knocks appointment viewing. Something that sets the bar higher than George Costanza did when pitching to Russell Dalrymple a show about nothing.
In its current form, Hard Knocks has essentially become a show about nothing. Whatever the benefits to the NFL for continuing to do the show, the real question is whether the NFL should continue to produce something that falls short of the standard the league has seemingly set for everything else it touches.
Offseason programs will start getting underway around the NFL next week.
The ten teams that hired new coaches this offseason will be eligible to start working with their players on Monday, April 6. The Ravens are the only team that has set that as their first day of work while the Cardinals, Falcons, Bills, Browns, Raiders, Dolphins, Giants, Steelers and Titans have set Tuesday as their opening day.
All of those teams will also be able to hold a voluntary minicamp later in the spring. Every team is also scheduled to hold a rookie minicamp and a mandatory minicamp over the course of the next few months.
The first two weeks of work for all teams is limited to meetings, strength and conditioning, and physical rehabilitation only. The three-week second phase allows for on-field work, but no full-speed team drills while the third OTA phase allows for team drills, but there is no live contact allowed at any point in the offseason.
Most of the 22 teams with returning coaches will be opening their offseason programs on April 20 or 21. The Broncos have set May 4 as their first day.
The Seahawks have never appeared on Hard Knocks since the show debuted in 2001 on HBO. They will this season.
In his first public comments since the NFL’s announcement, General Manager John Schneider admitted Thursday that his first reaction wasn’t positive.
“We’re just very protective of like how we do things and what our culture looks like,” Schneider said during an appearance on Seattle Sports 710, via Bob Condotta of the Seattle Times. “We’re going to make it as positive as we possibly can without sharing as much information as we possibly can.”
Schneider has come around, though, about NFL Films following the team through training camp and the preseason. He said he understands it from a “PR standpoint, a marketing standpoint.”
“It’s going to be great. . . . We’re going to work with the National Football League and the teams that have been through it before to help us just make it a positive for the organization and have it not be as much of a distraction,” Schneider said. “I talked to [Bears GM] Ryan Poles about it down there and a couple other people just about what it looks like, and we’ll have plenty of advice by the time we get there. But I think it’s going to be — it’s a great deal. When the commissioner called me about it, it made sense.
“Sam Darnold, [Devon Witherspoon], [Jaxon Smith-Njigba], [Leonard Williams], [Byron Murphy II], we got some cool characters on this team that are great stories.”
With 1:13 remaining in the first half of the NFC Championship Game, Rams coach Sean McVay called a pass, which fell incomplete, stopping the clock. The next play was another incomplete pass. That forced the Rams to punt with 1:03 left, giving the Seahawks plenty of time and timeouts to march down the field for a touchdown before halftime.
McVay still regrets that.
McVay called his clock management at that point in the game a “major mistake” in his appearance on PFT Live this week. When he looks back on the 2025 season, he doesn’t worry about things he couldn’t control, but it does still irk him that he could have called better plays in that situation than he called.
“I try not to dwell on stuff that really doesn’t move me forward,” McVay said. “Now, what I do dwell on is that NFC Championship Game. One thing you don’t do in a two-minute situation, don’t put the defense back out on the field. We run it on a first-and-10, and then you know what? Should have run it again. They got three timeouts, we end up throwing it, it goes incomplete, then we go incomplete on third down, give them three downs, they go score a touchdown. Changes the momentum of that going into the half. So, what I do evaluate are some of those after-action reviews on situationally.”
McVay said there were other decisions he made that drew criticism, like a failed fourth down in the fourth quarter, that he stands by. But he could have handled clock management better.
“What I would do differently is handle the end of the first half differently,” McVay said. “Handle some things differently game management-wise.”
The NFL has picked the 2026 Hard Knocks team. It also has picked the 2027 Hard Knocks team.
For the first time ever, the NFL has announced the subjects of the long-running HBO docuseries for the next two installments. Via Adam Schefter of ESPN, it will be the Seahawks in 2026 and the Patriots in 2027.
Neither team has ever served as the subject of the show. And both, obviously, made it to Super Bowl LX.
Once upon a time, the NFL exempted from Hard Knocks consideration any team that had made it to the playoffs within the past two seasons. That factor is obviously now long gone.
The NFL also started in-season Hard Knocks several years ago. In recent seasons, it has focused on an entire division. Presumably, the 2026 installment won’t focus on the NFC West — and the 2027 version won’t center on the AFC East.
The league had a one-year run of offseason Hard Knocks. It was so revealing (in a bad way) for the Giants that the experiment ended after one year.
The Seahawks will host the season opener on Wednesday, Sept. 9. Only the opponent is unknown.
With the Rams and 49ers playing in Melbourne on Thursday, Sept. 10, the Seahawks’ possible opponents are the Cardinals, Chiefs, Chargers, Bears, Cowboys, Giants and Patriots.
You can now scratch off the Chiefs.
Chiefs owner Clark Hunt said Monday that his team will not start the season in Seattle.
“I don’t think that’s on the table anymore,” Hunt said, via Nate Taylor of ESPN. “I think from a league standpoint, there would be some concern whether [Patrick Mahomes] would be ready to go.”
Mahomes tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee in a Dec. 14 game, and Dr. Dan Cooper repaired the tear the following day. Mahomes recently posted a video to social media showing himself on the field throwing the ball.
Seahawks head coach Mike Macdonald has said he’s excited about his team’s running backs even after the departure of Super Bowl MVP Kenneth Walker. And the running backs the Seahawks will feature this year include Zach Charbonnet.
Charbonnet tore his ACL in the divisional round of the playoffs and had surgery in February. Players sometimes need a full year to recover from ACL surgery, but Macdonald said that won’t be the case for Charbonnet, who will play this year.
“Zach’s a great player, he’s not going to miss the whole year,” Macdonald said.
Charbonnet will surely miss at least the start of the season, and it’s unclear who the Seahawks’ starting running back will be in Year One. But Macdonald sounds about as confident as a coach could be that his team can withstand the loss of the Super Bowl MVP.
