The Seahawks' offseason program, which began in April, started off with better attendance than head coach Mike Macdonald was expecting. Thanks to the team's long postseason run, which ended with a dominant win in Super Bowl LX, players had less time off after the 2025 season than is typical, and as a result, Macdonald told veterans and those who played a lot down the stretch of last season that they were welcome to skip the early part of the voluntary workout program.
Instead, a lot of the team's veterans and top players, ranging from Jarran Reed to Devon Witherspoon to Derick Hall to AJ Barner to Charles Cross, among others, were in the building on Day 1.
"We tiered our offseason program from having a later finish this season, but I was blown away by some of the guys that showed up today that we weren't asking to be here at this point in time," Macdonald said in April. "The energy is really great. There's still a sense of urgency and spirit to the guys, which is exciting.
"We said, 'Hey, look, if you finished playing the whole season, phase one, we would love for you to be here, obviously but to get more time out of the building so you can come back as fresh as possible. So guys like 'Spoon, J-Reed were here. Derick Hall. Guys that just wanted to be around the guys again. I thought that was really cool."
That sense of urgency and spirit continued throughout the offseason workout program and all the way through the final day of mandatory minicamp, which was followed the same night by a big celebration in which the team received its Super Bowl rings.
And now, as the Seahawks and the rest of the NFL head into some downtime ahead of training camp, let's take a look back at some of the things we learned about the 2026 Seahawks throughout OTAs and minicamp.
1. Macdonald's "Run it forward" messaging is being well received by his team.
Early in the offseason program, Macdonald made it clear that he doesn't want his team to think of itself as defending champion, or as a team looking to "run it back" even if 20 of 22 starters from the Super Bowl are back. Instead, the language Macdonald and company are using is that the Seahawks are trying to “run it forward.”
And what quickly became apparent as players met with the media during OTAs and minicamp is that the message is taking hold. Like their head coach, players made the point that, as exciting as the previous season was, it wasn't going to help them win game in 2026. Whatever success the team has this upcoming season will be because of the work this collection of players and coaches put in from April through the end of the season, not because of the incredible success last year's team had.
"I think it's the epitome of a championship team mindset that, you know you did it great, but you got to keep going," right tackle Abraham Lucas said. "You know, there's no time to really dilly dally on it. I mean, you have events like (the ring ceremony) that'll take place where you celebrate it, but after tonight, it's not going to matter for next year."
That mentality even carried over to the ring ceremony, with several players playfully shouting out, "nooo!" when Metro Boomin, who was DJing the party, asked the crowd, "Y'all ready to run it back?"
2. The "kinda" new offense is off to a good start.
The Seahawks made a change at offensive coordinator for the second straight year, though this time it was because Klint Kubiak left to become the head coach of the Raiders, not because Macdonald was looking to make a change.
Taking over for Kubiak is former 49ers run game coordinator and tight ends coach Brian Fleury, and while there will be a new voice leading the offense, it won't be a total overhaul. Both Kubiak and Fleury have roots in the Mike/Kyle Shanahan West Coast offense that leans on a wide zone running scheme. That means that, while Fleury will put his own touches on the offense, Sam Darnold and the rest of the offense will not have to learn an entirely new offense either.
"To use the term new, I would say, kinda," Macdonald said. "It's this year's version of last year's offense. It's the Seahawks offense, and Brian has brought some great ideas and some things we can move and shift. Right now, it's more of an installation, more of putting guys in positions where we ask them to do certain techniques and protections, plays that they need to be shown before we go and start executing a plan and start carving out ultimately what we're going to look like. So right now, it's more of an installation phase."
Darnold, who will be playing for his seventh offensive coordinator in the last seven seasons, likes what he has seen from Fleury so far.
"There is some good stuff," Darnold said when asked about any differences he has seen in the offense. "There is some good stuff that we got that he has seen throughout San Francisco the last two or three years that, like I said, since I left there that they continued to build on in their system that he brought over here. So it's been really good stuff. Then some of the stuff we were doing last year in incorporating that into some of the stuff that they don't necessarily do, or at least when I was in San Francisco, they hadn't done. So it's really good to just kind of bounce ideas off each other. Not only with me and Fleury, but with other players in the locker room as well, and then obviously with all the other coaches that have really good ideas that have been other places. So it's really cool to just continue to collaborate on certain ideas and concepts."