Seahawks returning to Nashville, where they uniquely bonded 15 months ago
More than a year later, they are still talking about the last time they were in Nashville.
It’s a week their coach and veteran players say is the root reason for this 2025 team’s greatest trait: Their togetherness.
In August 2024 new coach Mike Macdonald packed up the Seahawks’ entire operation — players and coaches, training and support staff down to the security guys — and moved it from team headquarters in Renton to Nashville. It was for two joint practices, then a Saturday preseason game. It was the first time in 33 years Seattle had joint NFL practices. The last time was when Chuck Knox had his Seahawks scrimmage the Atlanta Falcons at Portland State University in July 1991.
Two seasons later, the benefits from the Nashville trip are still paying off for Macdonald and the Seahawks.
Hours after the second of two morning practices with the Titans in Tennessee’s stifling heat and humidity that August week in 2024, all 90 Seahawks plus coaches and support staff got aboard four buses from their team hotel near Vanderbilt University. They took a short ride downtown, to Martin’s Bar-B-Que Joint, just down the street from the Country Music Hall of Fame.
Martin’s had games like corn hole, darts, ping pong and more. And, oh, yes, the players feasted. Martin’s is a full-pig barbeque spot. It featured buffet tables of whole pigs, beef brisket, chicken wings, roasted turkey and more.
Plus, there was a stage. Just about every establishment except gas stations in Music City has a stage.
Seahawks rookies got up on the one at Martin’s. They did skits. Those mostly got panned good-naturedly by napkin-throwing vets who had gone through the same thing in their first NFL summers. Players posted some of the hilarity on social media.
Passers-by on the street stopped to take pictures from behind the stage and gawk at the Seahawks’ roaring time out.
By the players’ accounts, Byron Murphy, then a rookie defensive tackle and the team’s first-round pick last year, did more than star on the field in the joint practices with the Titans that week. Murphy plus linebacker Tyrice Knight stole the team’s 2024 rookie talent show.
Veteran safety Coby Bryant laughed Wednesday when The News Tribune asked him what he remembers about the rookie talent show that night in Nashville.
“That was fun,” Bryant said, still smiling 15 months later. “Since I’ve been in the league that was my first real, live rookie talent show. Seeing those guys like ‘T-Knight’ and ‘B-Murph’ and all those guys perform.
“It was fun, just being around each other and not talking football all the time. Just being with our teammates and spending time with those guys.”
Also part of the raucous show: The Seahawks offensive coordinator at the time, Ryan Grubb, a 48-year-old native of Kingsley, Iowa, rapped.
Yes, that happened.
George Fant, now 33 and with the Washington Commanders, had been in eight previous training camps with three different teams and coaching staffs by that summer. Fant said in August 2024 Macdonald’s team outing to Martin’s was the best time he’s had in the NFL.
Macdonald, then in his first preseason in his first NFL head-coaching job running the Seahawks, smiled when he was told that.
He’s still smiling about it this week, as he and the Seahawks come off their second loss in nine games, last weekend at the Rams.
They are preparing to go back to Nashville this weekend. It’s far more of a business trip this time. The Seahawks (7-3) will play at the Titans (1-9) Sunday (10 a.m., FOX television, channel 13 locally).
“That was a great trip,” Macdonald said Wednesday of his team in Nashville two summers ago.
“That was one of the things that, getting feedback from the guys and lot of other people in the organization said that was really critical for our team coming together last year — and provided a little bit of a blueprint for us on what we needed to do to become tight and connected going into this offseason.
“It was a great experience,” Macdonald said. “It was great for us.”
It was so great, Macdonald did it again this past summer. He had the Seahawks in another joint practice, in Green Bay before their lone road preseason game in August at the Packers. He also expanded his team events into the offseason, into organized team activities in May and June. He’s cancelled offseason practice to take the players to visit specialized military units at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, including to the 1st Battalion 2nd Brigade Stryker Combat Team.
This August, just before they went to Green Bay for the joint practice and final preseason game, Macdonald surprised the players by cancelling a training-camp practice. Instead, he took them on a team outing to TopGolf, a golf-entertainment venue on Seattle’s east side.
Macdonald said he intends to do these outings every offseason and preseason.
“The trip to Tennessee last year was really great. And it’s like, ‘Why don’t we just create this more?’” Macdonald said.
“You might lose a couple hours here, a couple hours there on the field in spring. But it’s well worth the sacrifice to help build your team.”
Seahawks’ different ways
Seahawks defensive tackle Quinton Bohanna was on the Titans that week in August 2024 when Seattle had the joint practices at Tennessee. Bohanna noticed the synergy between the Seahawks from off the field carried onto the field in those two practices at Titans headquarters.
“I remember Seattle having a different tempo than Tennessee had at the time,” Bohanna told the TNT at his locker before practice Wednesday. “It seemed like the way we practiced when I was with the Titans was super easy for them (the Seahawks).
“Like, faster. The pace of the operation. And it just seemed like it was a super-quick practice to them.
“Now being here, it was.”
Bohanna, a 355-pound nose tackle, has been in the NFL for five years. He’s played for the Cowboys, Lions, Titans and now Seahawks. He says the camaraderie inside this Seattle locker room is unique.
He said this a couple feet away from where a defensive back and a linebacker were pantomiming superhero moves at each other, complete with voicing sound effects.
“It super-different, in a good way,” he said. “Not all teams do you have all position groups together mingling and playin’, just horse-playin’ around. We are super-close. This is a super-close team.
“It makes it easier when we are battlin’ and we have close games. Because people can get on me, and we know it’s coming from a good place. It’s not coming from a place of, they don’t care. It’s coming from good intentions.
“It’s different.”
All from that Seahawks week in Nashville 15 months ago.
Macdonald learned from it that bringing a group of men together and leading them is more than just the football.
“From my perspective, too, yeah the football is incredibly important. We are going to maximize the time allotted to the best of our ability,” the head coach said. “We’re practicing. We’re getting a lot of reps. All those things are important.
“But there is a time and a place where you don’t necessarily have to be on the practice deal to make your team better.”
This story was originally published November 19, 2025 at 3:30 PM.
