Seahawks training camp is on. New offense may aim to ‘put the game in the defense’s hands’
First came the firings. Then, all the hiring. The signings. The teachings.
Now, after the Seahawks overhauled their offense during the 6 1/2 months since they last played a game, they are getting on the field for real practicing.
Training camp for Seattle’s 50th NFL season begins Wednesday afternoon. Season-ticket holders watching alongside the practice fields at the Virginia Mason Athletic Center in Renton on day one will need a roster in hand to keep track of all the new on offense.
New quarterback Sam Darnold, from the Vikings. New wide receiver Cooper Kupp, from the Rams. A new lead tight end. Perhaps three new starting offensive linemen in drills run by Rick Dennison and John Benton, Seattle’s two new veteran assistants. They have a combined 47 years of NFL experience coaching O-lines — specifically the outside-zone blocking scheme new offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak is installing.
Heck, the Seahawks even have a new(-old) position on offense: a fullback.
All of them will be drilling with Kubiak’s heavy emphasis on running the ball he’s brought from the Saints last year. Before that he was scheming offenses of the Vikings, the 49ers and from Mike Shanahan’s 1990s Denver Broncos coaching tree.
There is only six weeks to get all this new right before the Seahawks’ first game, Sept. 7 against San Francisco.
“Klint is deep into his bag of all the different formations and shifts and things that we can do,” Kupp said.
The Seahawks signed the 32-year-old Yakima native, former Super Bowl MVP and 2021 NFL offensive player of the year after Seattle traded leading wide receiver DK Metcalf in March. That was to the Pittsburgh Steelers, for a second-round draft choice.
The Seahawks traded Metcalf two days after they traded starting quarterback Geno Smith to Pete Carroll’s Las Vegas Raiders.
How Klint Kubiak’s offense is different
What will be the difference between Kubiak’s Seahawks offense to that of Ryan Grubb, fired in January after his only season as Seattle offensive coordinator?
How it this different than what Smith, Metcalf and the Seahawks ran under Shane Waldron, the team’s play designer and caller for three seasons (2021, ‘22 and ‘23) before that?
The News Tribune asked the wide receiver who has learned and now run all three of those systems his last three years for the Seahawks.
Jake Bobo defines Kubiak’s new offense with two words.
“I think it comes down to ball control,” the third-year veteran told the TNT last month.
“Everybody wants to score points. And I think last year, we kind of went out and tried to score as many points as possible — which is, you know, as an offense, you love that. (I’m) relatively new around here and around this league, but it seems to me that the kind of winning formula in this league is time of possession, a really, really good defense, and then just, obviously, score points.”
Bobo sees and feels it already, after offseason meetings, film study and practices. Coach Mike Macdonald hired Kubiak to run the ball with lead back Kenneth Walker in the final year of his rookie contract. The offense’s new purpose is improve what was the NFL’s 29th-ranked rushing offense in 2024.
The aim is to compliment the Seahawks’ biggest strength: Macdonald’s swarming, confusing, potentially dominant defense.
“Almost, you want to put the put the game in your defense’s hands. I think that’s what Mike is trying to build here,” Bobo said, standing on the edge of the practice field immediately after veteran minicamp ended the veteran’s offseason work in mid-June.
“And everybody’s on board with it. Now that doesn’t mean we’re going to go out and, you know, just lay down. We want to be explosive if we need to. We want to score 50 points. But I think we’re going to try to hold the ball, score, obviously, when we can, and then turn over the defense and let them win games.”
Darnold is on board with with that.
“It’s great to, first and foremost, run the ball,” Darnold said. “When we’re running the ball the way that we know we will be able to (and) we’ll be able to put in (bootleg quarterback) keepers and do all those things on the perimeter, I think that will really stress the defense.”
Sam Darnold’s proving time
He is coming off a 14-3 season in Minnesota with 4,300 yards passing and 35 touchdowns. It was an anomaly in his six-year NFL career in which he’s gone 24-35 starting over five seasons for the Jets and Panthers and backing up Brock Purdy in San Francisco in 2023.
Is Darnold what he was the first 16 games of 2024 for Minnesota? Or is he what he was the first five years of his NFL career, and what we was this past January against the Lions in the NFC North title game then the Rams in the first round of the playoffs. Detroit then Los Angeles dominated him and eliminated the Vikings?
“It’s fair,” Darnold said of that question. “You get all the way to that point, and you have the season that we had offensively as a team, and at the end of the day only one team can win the Super Bowl. Unfortunately we weren’t that team.
“But I learned a ton from those last two games, especially, playing Detroit and playing L.A. We are going to see L.A. twice a year, obviously, playing in this division and really looking forward to that.”
He learned not to hold onto the ball as long, be more decisive. The Rams sacked him an NFL playoff-record nine times for 82 lost yards in that wild-card game.
“It’s just continuing to learn,” he said. “Learning things about yourself, what they did schematically, and yeah, that’s basically all you can do is just learn from those experiences.”
Seattle signed him to a three-year contract. It could be worth up to $100 million. And it could total far less than that. His guaranteed money decreases for year two and to almost none in year three.
The 28-year-old QB, recently engaged, has this year and likely next to prove worthy of remaining the Seahawks’ starter past 2026.
Training camp position battles
Some of the players on offense are doing all this learning of Kubiak’s system while trying to win multiple starting jobs. Training camp will settle these:
1. Lead tight end: The Seahawks did last weekend what many expected them to do in March. They released tight end Noah Fant. His inconsistent play didn’t warrant his salary. The team saved $8.9 million by releasing Fant Sunday.
Releasing Fant is a sign of how much coaches like second-year tight end AJ Barner, for his blocking and receiving.
Veteran Eric Saubert, 31, signed this offseason. He is known for his blocking.
Seattle drafted tight end Elijah Arroyo in the second round. He was outside as a slot and sometimes wider receiver with the starting offense some in offseason practices. He was an in-line tight end with quarterback Drew Lock and the second team.
2. Starting right guard: Christian Haynes, a third-round pick last year, and 2023 fourth-round pick Anthony Bradford split first-team reps in minicamp last month.
Macdonald says Bradford is in better shape and knows this is his time to impress starting Wednesday.
Sataoa Laumea is also in this competition. He started the final six games of last season.
3. Fullback: Most NFL teams don’t have one. Kubiak used one on 25% of the time calling New Orleans’ plays last season.
Macdonald has said you are going to see a lot of two backs for Seattle this season. The Seahawks haven’t used a fullback regularly since about back to Mack Strong on coach Mike Holmgren’s 2005 Super Bowl team.
This spring, they drafted one. A 275-pound one: former Alabama tight end Robbie Ouzts. And the coaches converted a tight end into one.
It’s Ouzts versus returning veteran Brady Russell for the fullback job. The competition begins in earnest in practices Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday to begin training camp.
This story was originally published July 23, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
