THIS central theme from SEAHAWKS minicamp day 1 should get you excited!

THIS central theme from SEAHAWKS minicamp day 1 should get you excited!

well what was supposed to be a threeday mandatory mini camp the last chance for the entire Seahawks roster to get together and practice before taking a break at least the veterans will before training camp starts in late July is now just two days mike McDonald chopping off one of those days we’ll talk about that a little bit today but I thought I would go back and look at everything that happened today and all the reactions to today’s workout so that you don’t have to and wrap it up with another edition of what they’re saying and there was a central theme coming out of the V-Mac today in Rent and I’ll tell you what that is next coming up on Seahawks Forever welcome to the Seahawks Forever podcast in-depth analysis on everything Seahawks and now here’s your host Dan VMs what’s up guys glad to be with you thanks for joining me again uh some really cool content yesterday a couple of great conversations with Jeff Simmons of Real Hawk Talk and also Brandon Kane of the Hawk Nest check those out if you haven’t already i know the Brandon uh conversation went on for two and a half hours it was one of our lengthy crossover live shows but it’s worth checking out brandon is just so insightful and I always love chopping it up with him about football so uh take your time break it up spread it out over a couple of days enjoy it also if you want to watch everything that I produce ad free you can do that over on Patreon sign up for one of the membership tiers over there both audio and video and depending on which tier you sign up for some exclusive videos and content created just for you good example of that Bryce Coots of the Hawk Zone Rundown uh who also is a quarterback coach offensive coordinator helped me break down all 26 red zone touchdown passes Sam Darnold threw last year for the Minnesota Vikings want to check that out as well all the other ways you can support the channel uh directly and me as an independent content creator are linked down below in the description uh but the best way and the easiest way and it’s free is just hit that subscribe button help the channel grow we are closing in on 10,000 subscriptions you guys that is a big milestone for me and uh would like to get there before training camp so help me do that hit that thumbs up if you like the video and if you want notifications anytime I post something new which is almost every day hit that bell button also so as I said at the top one of just two practices now for the full squad mandatory mini camp and while there was a lot of news today from around the league about players not practicing veterans holding out for new contracts or their first contract as is the case with Shamar Stewart in Cincinnati because he isn’t comfortable with the injury protections that are included in the deal that’s crazy the Bengals have long since been known as a team that uh is is very difficult to deal with in contract negotiations they should probably fix that especially when you have a team that that has a quarterback like like Joe Burrow and uh has a chance to maybe win some Super Bowls if you do things right anyway TJ Watt not practicing um some other uh instances of that around the league as well uh but everybody present and accounted for today at practice uh according to Brady Henderson who covers the team for ESPN um and that would I presume that would include even Chenna Noosu because earlier in the day he had said he didn’t see him out there of course Nosu coming off a little bit of a knee cleanup he’s not going to be ready to go until training camp starts we hope by then um John Schneider made it sound like a minor thing but then he did say later on at near the end of practice that everyone was accounted for even even Jonathan Henkins who uh hadn’t been there for a lot of the voluntary OTAA stuff uh we heard from Mike McDonald Cooper Cup Julian Love after practice and McDonald was asked about why did you shorten it to two days and I think we should all be encouraged by this answer he said the approach has been perfect the execution’s been great the effort’s been great he just felt like they’ve gotten accomplished everything they’ve wanted to accomplish in OTAAS up till this point and wanted to reward the veterans especially with a little bit of an extra break moving the mini camp up a week it was originally scheduled for next weekend and then uh taking that last day off uh the rookies have to stick around for a little bit uh they have to go through some of their stuff which usually includes an annual dinner with their parents at El Gaucho i’ve worked that many times so I’m sure they’ll be uh showing up over there uh we always take good care of those guys over there um but I thought what I would do is just kind of comb through everything and glean some of the highlights of the day and pass it along to you um and so I’ve done that there was big news today before practice even started the Seahawks extended one of their stars now we’ve all been watching for potentially Charles Cross to get an extension this year maybe Kobe Bryant maybe Boyet Maf uh no it was the punter Michael Dixon four years $16.7 million max value $10.2 million guaranteed so it saves him a little bit of money this year the way it’s structured uh but not enough to to make a huge impact uh the bottom line is Michael Dixon is now locked up through 2029 and once again becomes the highest paid punter in NFL history he lost that distinction for one day logan Cook of the Jacksonville Jaguars who honestly I am not ashamed to admit this had no idea who he was if you had bet me a million dollars on that trivia question of who the highest paid punter is in the NFL there’s no way I would have gotten it uh but the Seahawks oneuped him uh got Dixon taken care of today i I am baffled kind of by how the league views Michael Dixon and not quite sure well how they view punters as a whole uh his rookie year he was so good that he made first team allpro as a rookie has not made an allpro team since then hasn’t even made Pro Bowls since then even though he is as we sit here today when it comes to average yards per punt the third highest uh the third best punter in NFL history when it comes to average yards per punts and we know that’s not all of his game it’s the directional punting the situational punting knocking it out inside the 20 he’s just so good we take him for granted we don’t talk about him but now we don’t have to worry about losing him either he will be around uh through the end of the decade locked up through 2029 um couple of things that came out of uh practice today and then I’ve got a little bit of video we’ll show some clips from the press conferences that happened after practice kind of tie those in together into that central theme I teased uh and then at the end of the week uh Greg Bell has uh promised to come on the show and give his firsterson account of what he saw there before uh before we wrap up the onfield stuff for the next five or six weeks couple of things we learned today uh Nick Emman Warary is is kind of the talk of OTAAS actually like he just McDonald wants to talk about him all the time the coaches want to talk about him all the time the players want to talk about him all the time he really has been a bigger story than the first round pick Ray Zable zable’s just kind of fit in right and uh he’s just kind of being taken for granted just quietly going about his business now and stalled as the de facto assumed starter at left guard but Emman Worry just people can’t stop stop talking about him uh but what we learned today that I thought was funny a great comment from McDonald about how hungry he is to learn and uh and he even made the comment that he’s he comes into McDonald’s office more than any other player and that McDonald had to actually say something to him the other day they said you know you can knock the door’s closed right thought that was interesting not necessarily the open door policy that that some coaches have but hey you got to do your work right uh so I thought that was great you know a guy that we’ve talked about on the show that you know some people want to knock some of his shortcomings or the areas of his game that need development i mean that’s just what young players have to go through right just 21 years old one of the youngest players in the draft um really really like to hear those things and I will say like let’s just get this out of the way right now i get it we blow things up way too much this time of year but I believe that it’s not nothing right some of it’s hyperbole we’ve seen that i’ve criticized it you know when we’re talking about showing a highlight of a quarterback making a throw and talking about how elite he is and how what what a great year he’s going to be and what a what a problem he’s going to be like that’s the go-to cliche that a lot of these content uh accounts have to use uh this isn’t that this is you know you do what you can to glean important insight from these workouts and practices and what they’re saying about them it’s how my brain thinks it’s the things that I want to know and that’s that’s typically how I go about deciding what kind of content I want to present to you i try as much as possible not to base my decisions on what’s the most scintillating what’s the most compelling that’s going to get the most views because I’m telling you the couple of times I’ve done videos thinking that like man this one’s going to blow up they tank it’s just it’s just kind of the way the universe works right uh but I but my first um parameter that I have the first bar that I have to clear with myself when deciding on content is am I curious about it am I interested in it if because my brain’s always working i’m always thinking about what about this what about that how’s this guy doing how does this work how does that fit in we haven’t heard about this in a while if I’m thinking it I have to figure that a bunch of diehard Seahawk fans like you are also thinking it and so I try to take away from these things that I that I think check boxes and and that’s one of them you want to hear that the work ethic is there the other thing I gleaned from this M and worry stuff is and this always when you’ve been around football culture before you’ve been around teams you’ve been around players like I have the more crap they give a guy the more they like him and the better they think the player is going to be it’s just a fact if they’re leaving you alone you’re probably not going to make the roster right uh the hazing you know and not not the not the bad kind but just kind of the ribbing and and the the crap that the veterans are giving this kid and yet uh you know you’re going to hear from Julian Love here in a minute but he goes on to talk about Em and Worry uh and how humble he is and how how much he’s he’s taking all of that but now he’s starting to give it back a little bit right and that’s when you start to get comfortable and you feel like one of the guys um certainly as a player from an X’s and O’s standpoint we know that he they’re going to try everything they can to create a role for him and and have him make an impact as a rookie and I think we all agree that it’s important that he does so that it would add an element to this defense that they lack a little bit and it would have a little bit of a trickle down effect on some other things it would impact Deon Witherspoon’s role and and u and others so uh just great to hear how many guys just just continue to talk about Nick M and Warary and the presence that he seems to carry with him in addition to just the physical traits a lot of talk about Sam Darnold today too as there has been all throughout OTAAS obviously he’s the quarterback he’s new he’s replacing two guys that were really good um and so the focus of course is going to be on him uh but but I thought the funniest thing today was Cooper Cup revealed to us that first of all he’s not a good golfer which he says is atypical of NFL quarterbacks and I agree i don’t think I’ve ever known an NFL quarterback or even the college quarterbacks that I’ve known and some of them some of them I’ve known well they all can play golf it’s just a I don’t know what it is i don’t know if it’s just a I don’t I don’t I don’t know i don’t know help me out with this guys like I’m a psych and so minor like I try to get into like how people think and how the mind works and how uh you know kind of natural selection works you know we can talk about how you know usually NFL quarterbacks are attractive guys well that’s because they get weeded out through the process when they’re in junior high school and they get picked and all that kind of stuff right the golf thing I don’t get it because it takes work man i gave up on golf a long time ago because I thought I was getting good at it and then it all fell apart and it was too stressful and it’s not worth it and so I scrapped it it just cuz I understand how much of a commitment it takes to be good at it you have to do it all the time and these are guys that are really busy working hard at one of the hardest things to do in sports in the world and that’s play quarterback at the NFL level so maybe it’s just that they’re natural athletes and that’s it um because you can’t tell me that just 2 3 months during the off season they hunker down and work on their golf game and become good at it and they don’t get to play the rest of the year that just doesn’t make any sense to me but apparently Sam Darnold is more like me when it comes to playing golf than some of the other guys out there so I thought that was interesting also he eats like a child that Cooper Cup uh said he has an immature pallet and that when they’ve talked about going out to dinner in the past uh that he he balked at some of Darnold’s ideas because he just wanted to go out and eat chicken strips and fries which I don’t know if that concerns me as a Seahawk fan because I want I guess I want my quarterback eating really healthy and and a lot of protein and and complex carbs and being fit and lean and all of that but hey if it works it works right right and if it makes you happy i mean we know about DK Metaf’s diet right and how he just ate candy all day long and really only had one meal every day and look he was one of the fittest probably fittest player ever to play for the Seahawks so uh I just thought that was kind of funny um and then just this happened earlier in the day i just put it in my notes so I guess I’ll share it as much as we’ve talked about this off seasonason how little respect the Seahawks seem to get and how because of all the changes especially on offense that a lot of the national analysts are just dismissing them because they don’t know what to make of them and they’re ranking them near or at the bottom of the division and we see all these positional rankings come out from PFF and other entities and Seahawks just aren’t represented on those lists well we got a little bit today pff came out with their top 10 safety duos in the NFL and as much as I usually say take the PFF stuff the rankings with a grain of salt because they don’t they don’t use any kind of uh subjectivity in their rankings they only stick to their grades which is commendable but it also just means that that sometimes they miss things they miss ascending players they miss context but when they get something right it’s fun to talk about because they’re a huge huge entity julian Love Kobe Bryant ranked as the fourth best safety duo in the NFL i thought that was kind of cool um all right so the biggest central theme for me the biggest storyline really in OTAA is not just today has been the offense because what have we talked about most of this offseason the continuity and the chemistry on defense all 11 starters back 15 players who started games last year and then you add Demarcus Lawrence to that and you add Nick M and Warry to that and then potentially at some point Riley Mills the questions have been on the offense and I think that plays into why some people have hesitated to embrace the Seahawks because they just they don’t know it until they see it doesn’t stop them from being bullish on other teams that have undergone a lot of changes but I digress um there was a lot of talk about the offense today a lot of good questions from the media on the offense today tip of the cap uh shout out to Jen Mueller who uh seemed to be uh really concentrating on this kind of storyline in her questioning uh all throughout the the press conference today how’s the offense doing and we got some interesting perspectives so I’m going to play some video here from Mike McDonald talking about it as obviously a defensive coach going against these guys every day in practice and what they’re showing them uh we get a comment from Cooper Cup on his experience in the McVey system how it’s similar how it’s different what he thinks about the offense so far and then Julian Love talking about approaching it as a defensive player and how different it is than what they’ve seen in the past a little commenting here as well on how Sam Darnold’s doing uh let me just play this for you put it up on the screen and then uh and then react to it here we go you know the thing you love about Sam is he’s just a he’s a just a dude man he’s just a just a he’s like one of the guys there’s a there’s a sense of he’s one of the guys so he’s you know right there with him and all the things and but he’s that’s him but there’s some there’s some there’s some there’s some to him like he’s like don’t mess with him you know he’s he’s got that edge to him that competitiveness and the guys respect that love that and uh yeah but but he’s him you know he’s not trying to be anybody else and you got to respect that about him let me just pause there for a second if you didn’t watch my conversation with Max Brown last week definitely check it out it uh it’s interesting on on two levels first of all Max is a guy that was uh one of the most decorated high school quarterbacks in NFL history or in Washington State history uh went on to USC uh transferred to PIT and now he calls games college football games and he’s a great content creator uh check out his YouTube page for sure but he was teammates with Sam Darnold at USC and we talked about this a little bit last week um just how laid-back his attitude is and not in a bad way not in an I don’t care way and I think that’s important he says he he works as hard as anyone and you just heard McDonald talk about that like he’s a competitor he’s got some to him like I like that i’m probably gonna use that i’m gonna steal it earlier in the uh he was answering another question he said he’s got some stuff to him and then he got a little bit more uh definitive there but uh but I like that because it allows you to shake things off like Gino like I loved Gino’s competitive spirit but he was wound tightly it was a different personality and I think sometimes uh sometimes it kind of caused him to tighten up a little bit and um you know I’m a big Ted Lasso fan i believe in the goldfish theory right you make a mistake you do something wrong you got to blow it off and forget all about it we heard about last Tuesday or last Monday in practice uh the first open media session last week how he had a couple bad interceptions but he didn’t let him get it get it down and and and he came back in the red zone session later in that practice and was outstanding and then as the week went along along he got better he didn’t let him he didn’t let it ruin him and if you’re going to if you’re going to make it out of that Jets gauntlet that so that has ruined so many quarterbacks over the years and going through everything he went through and the whole I’m seeing ghost thing and whatever and and being called a bust and come out on the other end of it like there’s more than one way to skin a cat gino did have the same journey and came out of it and really resurrected his career did it with that personality type of being so so ultra tightly competitive like he is sam approaches it in a different way uh I like it and I do think it ingrains yourself uh to your teammates really well as first but al also just from an athletic standpoint I think it helps you to deal with setbacks and adversity well we’re seeing a lot we’re seeing a lot you see uh Clint’s doing a great job mixing up the looks uh there’s a lot of motions and and shifts and pictures and you got to you know counts that are changing on the fly and uh it’s a lot of stress on us on defense so and I got to give our defense a lot of credit i mean these guys uh they’re on a mission right now and and uh you got to respect that about them every opportunity we have whether it’s a walkthrough or an ACT practice at the end at the end here you just you really you really there’s a competitive spirit about you know doing it the right way mastering what we’re trying to do as a system and uh and that’s the expectation as it should be uh music to my ears uh if you haven’t watched the uh the breakdown with Bryce on the interceptions again uh become a member on the YouTube channel here or over on Patreon to be able to watch that um you know Bryce with his expertise and his coaching experience helping break down the 26 touchdown passes that Sam Darnold threw in the red zone last year to just four interceptions um and that was an area that Gino struggled in last year but one of the things that we both liked about watching all those cutups is what we saw from Kevin Oonnell’s offense and it was a lot of motion in fact I think out of the 26 touchdown passes I think only one of the 26 plays did not include any motion a lot of motion a lot of displacement um and and that’s just something we didn’t always see from from Grub last year you know we saw uh and you’ve heard people here on the show talk about it analysts that have come on and said that you could tell by the way the defense reacts when you watch the all 22 brandon and I talked about it on the show last night that they knew what was coming a lot of times they would shoot gaps knowing that’s where a play was coming or they would know you know some of the tells that he had on when they’re running the football and when they’re not there wasn’t enough play action and when they would play fake they would play fake to a side that they never actually ran to at times and things like that i don’t expect to see that from Clint Kubak given his lineage and his upbringing i I expect to see more similarities to what we saw from Kevin Oonnell and uh to hear McDonald actually say that and bring it up today uh is encouraging for me now let’s see what Cooper Cup has to say you know Clint’s been in a lot of different places origins going all the way back to an offense that I’m very familiar with and um there’s going to be their you know the nuances here and there of things like that but um you know a lot of similar stuff a lot of similar ideas and how you’re attacking a defense and um you know I believe in this offense and what what it takes to um to make it successful the detail that’s involved with it so um you know there’s a lot of things there that are real similar to stuff I’ve done done in the past and um and there’s some new stuff I’m excited to learn and excited to step into so uh it is it’s it’s good and there’s uh there’s definitely some stuff there that that accentuates you know the um things I’ve done the past couple things I like there i like that little smirk at the end when he talked about how it it does some things that that accentuate what he’s done well he’s excited about his role in this this offense that should tell you something uh you know he’s got the fresh clean look got rid of the long beard right just said it was time for a change uh dude looks fit makes me want to go to the gym right now i know that it was ankle has and lower body stuff that’s been beating him up the last couple years but uh the rest of it looks looks fine um and then it was just it was the little tidbit there about how there’s a lot of stuff he recognizes there’s a lot of familiarity because there is similar DNA shared DNA between the McVey system uh which you know in many ways comes from West Coast offense and Shanahan they they were all kind of again they they came from the DNA the same DNA but McVey has adapted his offense quite a bit over the years and so to hear that it sounds like Clint Kubak’s also doing that and adding new things in and changing and adapting things uh I’d be a little concerned if Cooper was just standing up there saying “Yeah I know this offense well i’ve run it before it’s a piece of cake.” I want ingenuity i want evolution in the offense uh the good OC’s do that and so that’s encouraging to me and then Julian Love uh again on what it’s like to face from schematics from personnel when you play against each other so much you tend to just kind of play the person and kind of you know who you’re going against and right now we we need to play free we play true to kind of the scheme um and just kind of read everything true there’s not really a lot of anticipation because you’re seeing different looks every other play um they’re doing a great job right now they they’re keeping us guessing for for um yeah they’re going to dial down sam’s doing a great job uh and their skill players are making some plays out there and we I we love it cuz we’re going to compete no matter what again and we’ve heard throughout OTAAS the uh the offensive guys talking about how difficult the defense is making it on them they don’t hold back they’re practicing their stuff and we’ve heard Mike McDonald talk about how uh with the chemistry with the continuity so many guys back that he can open up the playbook he had to tighten things up last year especially at mid-season he didn’t run as many of the sim pressures as he’s known for and some of the exotic blitzes and things like that they played a little bit more vanilla last year because they had so many it was new it was new it was new to all of them and then they made some personnel changes throughout the year and those guys had to get up to speed so uh that’s encouraging that they’re basically you know they’re throwing it all out there and so while this offense needs to learn on the fly and Kubak said a few days ago they haven’t installed the whole playbook yet and that won’t all be installed in the next 48 hours it it it won’t all be installed until close to the season that you know you’re just uh iron sharpens iron right isn’t that the old statement and you’re going up against what I expect to be one of the best defenses in the league this year i really do you hear them talk about what’s happening with this group and about how familiar they are with each other julian talks at length about he and Kobe and how they know each other really well now and it just uh there’s an enthusiasm there that isn’t just lip service it’s genuine and it’s a good mix of young guys and older guys that have been there done that played on other defenses and so they know right and so I think that’s really really encouraging i’m excited to hear uh what comes out of tomorrow and then get kind of a full look as we get towards the end of the week uh as I said uh haven’t scheduled it yet i’ll reach out tomorrow and see what his schedule looks like for Thursday or Friday but Greg Bell is going to be joining us shortly after mini camp ends uh to wrap it up with what he saw uh until then hey the best way to support the channel subscribe to the channel help us get to 10,000 subs we’re almost there and if you don’t want to miss anything just by subscribing you’re going to see suggestions for the new episodes when you log into your YouTube that’s just kind of part of the algorithm but if you want to be notified hit that bell and then uh you won’t miss anything i’ll be back tomorrow follow me on Twitter Seahawks Forever Blue Sky also if you do that thing over there um check out the new Patreon page definitely do that the new merch store playing around with some alternate logos and things like that there’s all sorts of variety on there i’ve been having fun maybe a little too much fun i need to dial it back when it comes to uh going on the on the website and creating new merch for you but check it out couple more orders placed today really appreciate the support it’s a good way to help support the channel as well and I can’t wait to be at a game next year and run into one of y’all wearing some merch that will be pretty damn cool uh until tomorrow forever and always go Hawks thanks for watching thanks for supporting we’ll see you tomorrow [Music]

The Seattle Seahawks held the first of two full-squad, mandatory minicamp workouts today at the VMAC in Renton, WA and among the many storylines there was one central theme that caught my ear today….. and it’s one that should get Seahawks fans excited!
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