Seahawks defensive end DeMarcus Lawrence capped his 12th NFL season with his first Super Bowl ring. He considered calling it quits after that.
Only when Lawrence’s wife told him “it was OK” did he decide to return for a 13th season.
“I kind of had my mind made up that if I won, I was done,” Lawrence said, via Brady Henderson of ESPN. “But I kind of had a bittersweet feeling in my heart, understanding that with the type of team that we had, we should have been where we were last year. This is where the hard part begins, staying on top.”
Lawrence, 34, also considered retiring in the 2025 offseason after his 11-year run with the Cowboys ended. He instead signed with the Seahawks as a free agent.
Now, he returns to help the Seahawks attempt a repeat.
“They say it’s no fun when the rabbit has the gun,” Lawrence said. “We’re the ones with the dot on our backs. I just want to see how that feels, see the different obstacles that we can overcome. Are we going to stay together in those tough moments throughout a season? And just be a part of this brotherhood.”
Seahawks Clips
The Seahawks have made a roster move.
Seattle announced the club has signed linebacker Power Echols on Friday.
Echols, 23, entered the league last year as an undrafted free agent out of North Carolina. He spent time with the Bears and Texans in 2025, though he didn’t appear in a regular-season game.
As a corresponding move, Seattle waived linebacker Joseph Vaughn.
The defending champs have brought in a fullback.
Seattle announced on Thursday that the club has signed Brock Lampe.
Lampe, 23, entered the league last year as an underrated free agent and spent the season on New England’s injured reserve.
The Patriots let him go just late last month.
As a corresponding move, the Seahawks waived tight end Lance Mason.
Zach Charbonnet underwent surgery to repair the torn anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee on Feb. 20. He started training camp on the active/physically unable to perform list, and it seems likely he will begin the season on the reserve/PUP list.
Seahawks coach Mike Macdonald provided an update on the running back’s rehab.
“It’s just a progression that you’ve got to be able to do to get your body ready to play, especially at the running back position,” Macdonald said, via video from Brian Nemhauser of hawkblogger.com. “He’s going through it, hitting his hurdles, and we’re rolling.
“We’ll see what the timetable is and how quickly he comes back.”
Charbonnet injured his knee on his fifth carry in the divisional round of the playoffs after running for 730 yards and 12 touchdowns on 184 carries in the regular season. The Seahawks drafted running back Jadarian Price in the first round as a replacement for Kenneth Walker, who won the Super Bowl MVP award before leaving for Kansas City in the offseason.
The Seahawks announced a handful of roster moves on Wednesday afternoon.
They have signed running back T.J. Harden and cornerback Jordan Washington. Cornerback Brandon Johnson and linebacker Garrett Nelson were waived to make room for the new arrivals.
Harden signed with the Browns after going undrafted out of SMU this year and was waived last week. Rookie Jardarian Price is at the top of the running back depth chart in Seattle with Zach Charbonnet still recovering from a torn ACL.
Washington tried out for the Seahawks at their rookie minicamp. He transferred from Dartmouth to Stanford for the 2025 season.
The Seahawks added a linebacker on Tuesday.
They announced the signing of Garrett Nelson to their 90-man roster. Wide receiver Kyre Duplessis was waived in a corresponding move.
Nelson was in camp with the Broncos last year and spent time on practice squads in both Denver and New Orleans during the season. He also had stints with the Dolphins and Bengals in 2023, but has no NFL game experience.
Nelson played for San Antonio in the UFL in 2024 and 2025. He had 27 tackles, four tackles for loss, 2.5 sacks and two forced fumbles in 19 games for the team.
Duplessis signed with the Seahawks last week.
Changes to the Collective Bargaining Agreement have caused the holdout to become the hold-in, where players who want new deals show up but don’t practice until they get their contracts.
It’s less about withholding services and more about avoiding injury. And the teams typically go along with it, to a point, even if they could (if they wanted) play hardball and tell the player to get to work.
For the players who are negotiating deals and choose to practice, there’s a calculated risk. It came up last night in the context of Packers tight end Tucker Kraft, who’ll practice without an extension as he re-establishes himself after a torn ACL suffered last November.
Other players who are practicing without new deals surely have their reasons. But it’s still a risk.
Consider the comments of Patriots coach Mike Vrabel regarding cornerback Christian Gonzalez practicing while negotiating.
“Listen, we’ve talked about this contract,” Vrabel said. “It’ll either get done, and when it gets done, that’ll be the progress that’s made. Everybody that’s involved is working hard. I cannot express the professionalism that Gonzo has started camp with. It’s clear that he wants to improve, that he wants to be the best at his craft and at that position. I think that he’s made that known by the way he’s come out here to practice.”
That’s good. But here’s the thing. If lightning strikes, as it tends to do during training camp, the negotiations will end. Immediately. And they won’t continue until Gonzalez is back and able to show that he can perform at a high level.
It’s true for any player who has chosen to practice while negotiations happen. Gonzalez, Seahawks cornerback Devon Witherspoon, Colts running back Jonathan Taylor, and any other player who is practicing while waiting for a new deal.
So that’s why players like Falcons running back Bijan Robinson and Lions running back Jahmyr Gibbs aren’t practicing. With a torn ACL or a blown-out Achilles, the offers go from wherever they currently are to zero dollars and zero cents.
Six years after running back James Robinson rushed for 1,070 yards as a rookie in 2020 with the Jaguars, he’s looking for a path back to the NFL.
Robinson had a tryout on Saturday with the Raiders.
He played most recently for the Louisville Kings of the UFL, rushing for 324 yards in six regular-season games and adding 128 in two postseason games for the eventual league champions.
Robinson was traded to the Jets during his third season, to the Jets. He spent 2023 with the Packers, appearing in only one game and having just one carry. He did not play in the NFL in 2024 or 2025.
For his NFL career, Robinson has rushed for 2,264 yards. (So far.)
Also trying out on Saturday were running backs Dare Ogunbawale and Kenny McIntosh. Ogunbawale, a nine-year veteran, spent the last four seasons in Houston. His tenure including kicking a 29-yard field goal in a 2023 win over Tampa Bay, 39-37, after Texans kicker Ka’imi Fairbarn suffered a quad injury.
McIntosh, a seventh-round pick of the Seahawks in 2024, was released on July 27.
In the push and pull over whether NFL fields will be covered with high-quality grass, a global solution is possible, albeit unlikely, through collective bargaining. For now, the decisions will be made one team at a time — especially as new stadiums are built.
The Bills decided to convert from turf to grass in their new stadium. The Chiefs, who are in the process of building a new domed stadium in Kansas, prefer to continue to play on grass, but no decision has been made.
The Browns are also building a covered stadium, in suburban Brook Park. They currently play on grass. Per the team, the Browns will play on artificial turf in the new stadium.
That said, the new stadium will have the ability to accommodate grass, which happens most often when a venue hosts soccer matches. Which means that, in theory, the artificial turf for NFL games could eventually be swapped out for grass.
For now, the plan is artificial turf. Which will tip the current 16-16 balance of teams playing homes games on real grass and fake grass toward turf, 17-15.
Unless, of course, owners of teams that play on turf decide to switch to grass. Starting with the incoming owners of the Seahawks, possibly.
The Seahawks added depth at linebacker on Saturday by signing Joseph Vaughn, the team announced.
In a corresponding move, the Seahawks waived linebacker Ja’Markis Weston with an injury designation.
Vaughn went undrafted out of UCLA in 2025, signing with the Colts. He spent camp with Indianapolis before the team waived him before the start of the season.
The Colts signed him to a futures contract after the season but waived him this spring.
In 2024 at UCLA, Vaughn appeared in 12 games in his one season with the Bruins. He totaled eight tackles.
Before his time in Los Angeles, Vaughn played three seasons at Yale. He was a two-time All-Ivy League selection, including first-team honors in 2023.
Weston, who signed to the Seahawks’ practice squad late last season, would revert to Seattle’s injured reserve list if he clears waivers.
