RENTON — Marquez Valdes-Scantling once proved to everyone else, if not himself, that he could be an NFL player in Green Bay.
As a fifth-round pick of the Packers in 2018, Valdes-Scantling became something of a fan favorite when he earned a starting spot as a rookie and two years later led the NFL in yards per reception at 20.9 in 2020.
“A lot of good memories there,” Valdes-Scantling said Tuesday. “A lot of great games there.”
Four years and four teams removed from his Packers days, Valdes-Scantling returns to Green Bay this week as a member of the Seattle Seahawks for a joint practice Thursday and the final preseason game for each team Saturday.
Whether he again has something to prove may be a matter of perspective.
Valdes-Scantling entered camp expected to fill the No. 3 receiver role behind Jaxon Smith-Njigba and Cooper Kupp, signing a one-year contract worth up to $3.95 million that included $3 million fully guaranteed.
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But a slow start to camp and the emergence of rookie fifth-round pick Tory Horton — who often worked with the first team in practice in the week leading up to the preseason game against Kansas City last Friday, relegating Valdes-Scantling to working the second team — has led to some conjecture that Valdes-Scantling could be fighting for not only the third WR role but simply making the 53-man roster.
Recent comments by head coach Mike Macdonald and offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak have acknowledged that, while Valdes-Scantling took a little while to get going, they still view him as having a role in the offense in 2025.
“He’s had a really good camp,” Kubiak said last week. “He’s battling with a lot of guys, but his speed really shows up. Coach (Macdonald) has done a phenomenal job of keeping the top off of our offense with some of their coverage looks. Some of the stuff that he’s shined (in the past) hasn’t shown up as much. But I see the guy winning on his routes, see the guy with a great attitude, and see a big-time player for us.”
Valdes-Scantling was signed in the wake of the departures of DK Metcalf and Tyler Lockett in large part because he played the final eight games of the 2024 season with the Saints when Kubiak was the offensive coordinator, making 17 catches for 385 yards and four touchdowns, an average of 22.6 yards per reception.
The ability of the 6-foot-4, 206-pound Valdes-Scantling to line up wide and stretch the defense and make big plays, the Seahawks felt, would be a good complement to Smith-Njigba (listed at 6-foot) and Kupp (listed at 6-foot-2), receivers who have more commonly aligned in the slot.
The Seahawks haven’t acted as if they need to see Valdes-Scantling do anything on the field to win a roster spot as he didn’t play in the first preseason game and got the same reps as the rest of the starters in Friday’s 33-16 win over the Chiefs, with 10 snaps.
“I felt like his best days have been in the last week or so,’’ Macdonald said before the Chiefs game. “He’s playing fast.”
Horton, who finally got past a knee injury sustained last October to return to the field the first week of training camp, is dealing with an ankle injury suffered against the Chiefs that held him out of practice all week. He was not on the field Tuesday. Valdes-Scantling has returned to working regularly with the ones with Horton out.
Macdonald has indicated Horton’s injury is not serious.
Still, any question about his availability for the start of the season could make questions about Valdes-Scantling’s future moot.
The receiving corps is already viewed as one of the Seahawks’ biggest question marks, and the 30-year-old Valdes-Scantling brings a track record of not only 68 regular-season starts but seven more in the playoffs, including two Super Bowl rings with the Chiefs in 2022 and 2023.
Valdes-Scantling said Tuesday he doesn’t dispute that it took him a while to get going in camp.
A native of St. Petersburg, Fla., Valdes-Scantling has never played for a team west of the Central Time Zone. He said that adjustment meant it took a little while to get used to doing things on Seattle time, saying he was “just not able to get a lot of sleep the first week” of training camp.
“It was a change going from living in Florida all the way to the West Coast, the very top of the United States,” he said. “Now I’m here and got my feet under me, and now I can be the player I want to be.”
After a week or so, he said he was “able to move how I know I should be able to.”
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Valdes-Scantling said there was some adjustment to the offense, even though he was already familiar with it because of his time with Kubiak in New Orleans.
The offense he ran in New Orleans was scaled down since he arrived in the middle of the season, and each week was about learning the plan for the upcoming game.
Now he’s had to learn the whole thing, as well as all of the receiver positions instead of just out wide, where he was most of the time with the Saints.
“Got to New Orleans last year midseason, so I was kind of limited to one position,’’ he said. “But now being able to kind of move around and do different things has been good.”
Valdes-Scantling and the rest of the starters are expected to get a game’s worth of snaps Thursday as a last tuneup before the regular season.
For those with roster spots on the line, the practice could mean even more.
While Macdonald said earlier in camp that Valdes-Scantling “knows he’s in a battle,” Valdes-Scantling says he doesn’t view it that way.
“Everybody is competing, man,” he said. “It’s not me versus (Horton) or me versus Coop, or me versus anybody. We’re all just trying to be better. I’m not here to prove myself and he’s (Horton) not here to prove himself. We’re just out here trying to be the best versions of ourselves and help this team win.”
Macdonald recently noted that when he sees Valdes-Scantling on the practice field at the VMAC, he still often flashes back to a 32-yard catch Valdes-Scantling made on a third-and-9 play with just over two minutes left to sew up a 17-10 win for the Kansas City Chiefs in the 2023 AFC title game against Baltimore — the final game Macdonald coached as defensive coordinator for the Ravens before coming to Seattle.
“Stuck a dagger in our heart,” Macdonald said. “That’s on my mind a lot.”
Valdes-Scantling’s hopes is to give Macdonald more pleasant memories this season.
“He’s brought it up to me a few times, just jokingly,” Valdes-Scantling said. “Obviously it was a big moment in a big game to send us to the Super Bowl. But we are two years removed from that, so we don’t necessarily live in the past anymore.”
Bob Condotta: bcondotta@seattletimes.com. Bob Condotta covers the Seahawks for the Seattle Times. He provides daily coverage of the team throughout the year.