Transcript
Tristan Amundson: Folks, welcome in to the world's only Seahawks podcast. I'm Miles Tristan. He's a veteran podcaster at this point. We are saving his reps for the regular season instead of this training camp grind.
Tristan Amundson: As always, we've gone on our summer sabbatical. Not as always. It's been a pretty busy summer in the world of the Seahawks. I'm going to get right into the two big stories that have dominated the summer. And then episode number one of Hard Knocks, which, funny enough, talks about a lot of interesting things, but in 50 minutes did not cover either of the two, I would say, biggest things that happened in the nest, this this Seahawks nest that we all live in.
Tristan Amundson: Number one, it's a few months old at this point, but we got to talk about it The Los Angeles Rams trade for Miles Garrett from the Cleveland Browns. I took a look at the draft pick haul this morning. It was a little less than i would. I remembered that it was. It seems like this was...
Tristan Amundson: Honestly, a win-win deal for both the Browns and the Rams, and it's scary. It's scary from the Seahawks' perspective. I do think this does make the Rams the Super Bowl favorites for the year 2026. Nothing that can't be overcome. There were probably a lot of points in the 2025 season when the Rams were the favorites in Las Vegas or what have you.
Tristan Amundson: So despite this being the Miles Garrett trade, one year after he set the all-time record for most sacks in a season, think the most newsworthy part of this, the part that we still don't know which way it's going to go, the more interesting story right now, is the potential return of Aaron Donald.
Tristan Amundson: And to me, this is pretty interesting. We know, we know just from last year that the Rams, even being major Super Bowl contenders, was not enough to w rustle Aaron Donald from his hibernation.
Tristan Amundson: We didn't really hear a lot about Aaron Donald trying to join the 2025 Los Angeles Rams. That could have been a move that that did swing the Super Bowl if he did decide to join the Rams, and we would be having a much different discussion about our Seahawks versus the Rams.
Tristan Amundson: So Aaron Donald didn't try to do that last year. He retired relatively early. Aaron Donald played 10 seasons. We got the picture that Donald wanted to do this because he had accomplished everything he set out to accomplish, and there was maybe a a motivation issue. He knew that if he were to continue, he wasn' he wasn't going to be motivated as as well as he was to play at the Hall of Fame level he did play at. And the potential...
Tristan Amundson: Pairing with Myles Garrett, I think, is something that would motivate Aaron Donald, which is pretty scary. And I wonder if the appeal to Aaron Donald is if he's on the same defensive line as Myles Garrett, if this is if this is one of the few NFL teams ever that is so good on paper that they just can't lose in real life. It's it's a real possibility.
Tristan Amundson: I was wondering if, hey, is this ah is this a potential union of two of the top 10 defensive players in NFL history? Then I was thinking about names like Ray Lewis, Ed Reed, Troy Polamalu, and I was like, all right, that that's a good amount of names right there. I'm not even going back into the 20th century. There's been a lot of great NFL defensive players over time.
Tristan Amundson: what What are we actually looking at? And I thought the best way to look at it was a stat that profootballreference.com uses called the Hall of Fame Monitor. Now, this is a stat that The website kind of made up on their own.
Tristan Amundson: It's tracking things like all pro appearances, pro bowl appearances. Pro Football Reference also created a stat called approximate value, which kind of gives a number, like ah an all-in-one number of a player's season with like 20 being a Hall of Fame level season and zero or one being what most NFL players contribute on the bottom end of a roster.
Tristan Amundson: So this isn't exactly scientific, but... It is a good measure, I think, of just trying to remove recency bias and and how good are the best players compared to one another.
Tristan Amundson: And this goes all the way back to 1955. So we're looking at at the majority of professional football history and how good the very best players are compared to one another.
Tristan Amundson: So let's get started with Aaron Donald and defensive tackle. On the Hall of Fame monitor score, the average Hall of Famer, their career score is 102. And there's only 10 players who have 10 defensive tackles since 1955 who have a Hall of Fame monitor score over 102. One of those guys is Cortez Kennedy, obviously a Seahawks legend, number retired by the team.
Tristan Amundson: Can't say enough good things about him. His score is 103.2 on the Hall of Fame monitor. We move up to number two defensive tackle all time. That's Bob Lilly. He was with the Cowboys in the 60s and 70s.
Tristan Amundson: His score is 159.3. And number one defensive tackle all time, at least since 1955, is is Aaron Donald, and he is a big step above Bob Lilly. We go from 159.3 to 181.1. Are we getting that exact same Aaron Donald after a few years of retirement if he were to come back?
Tristan Amundson: Obviously, none of us know, ah but that's... with it So there we go. Aaron Donald, number one defensive tackle of all time. it's It's safe to say that's not just recency bias.
Tristan Amundson: Moving on to Myles Garrett and defensive end. On this score, the average Hall Famer is at 102 as well. There are nine players who have gotten above that threshold, led by number one, Reggie White.
Tristan Amundson: That makes sense as a stat. Myles Garrett, he's only played nine years in the league so far. But after those nine years, Garrett sits at number 11 among all defensive ends. So if he were to retire right now, basically before...
Tristan Amundson: Playing with the Rams, it would kind of be a coin flip if he were to get in the Hall of Fame or not, which is pretty astonishing after just nine years of play. So, with Garrett at number 11 and Donald number one, no I don't think you can say these are two of the best 10 defensive players of all time, but you could say, okay, these are two of the top 15 defensive linemen of all time, and obviously it is Super rare and potentially has never happened before to get two of those guys on the exact same team.
Tristan Amundson: And it would it would be interesting to see on one level and also terrifying to see because it would be happening in the NFC West. Just to show how great Donald is, by the way. So Garrett obviously set the record for most sacks all time in a season last year.
Tristan Amundson: Nine career years. Garrett's at a career 125.5 Donald has an additional season on him. he's played years so far.
Tristan Amundson: Hopefully it stays that way at 10, but Donald in 10 years has 111 sacks. So to be almost there, know Garrett has a little bit more, but for Donald to be that close coming in from the interior of the defensive line is just shocking. And I think it shows, that shows the difference between being the ninth best at your position all time, or sorry, 11th best your position of all time versus the very best at your position of all time.
Tristan Amundson: Another thing I've been thinking about this with the Rams and Seahawks once again positioned to have just an unbelievable rivalry this year. i don't think this is biased coming from a ah Seahawks perspective, but I'm a little bit surprised the media hasn't jumped on the potential of the Rams being the villains and the Seahawks being the good guys.
Tristan Amundson: I think there's a lot of of potential villainy going on with the Rams, and and that's how the story could really be portrayed. We've got Puka Nakua being out of pocket over the last several months. We've got, you know, this team has dismissed some of its veteran players, particularly Ernest Jones and Cooper Cup, thinking they didn't have it anymore.
Tristan Amundson: Turns out these are really, really high intangible guys. And I don't know. There's just something about there's there's there's a ah villainy with the Rams focusing on the stars. you know They have this really fancy stadium that nobody fills up, even though the Rams have been in Los Angeles for 61 years versus 51 years for the Seahawks in Seattle.
Tristan Amundson: ah The dismissal for that the Rams, the the clear... Uninterest that the Rams have in the bottom half of their roster and the special teams play versus the Seahawks being a very unified group all the way down the roster, down to the ready squad.
Tristan Amundson: I don't know. I think this rivalry could be pitched in a very different way than it is right now. And you know what? If Donald joins and him and Miles Garrett are just ripping through people all year,
Tristan Amundson: there is still the potential that this all comes down to an individual special teams play somewhere in December or January. It's pretty much how it happened last year. And I hope, I hope that's how it happens again. um Cause yeah, and that it, it, um it could be pretty scary and obviously something to monitor.
Tristan Amundson: The other big thing that happened with the Seahawks this summer was the team is sold. or it was preliminarily sold, there will be a vote among the NFL owners on August 26th to make this official.
Tristan Amundson: The new owner, former 3% owner of the San Francisco 49ers, his name is Vinod Khosla. He immigrated to America from Bombay, India when he was 21 years old, got in Silicon Valley early,
Tristan Amundson: And 50 years later, he has a net worth of $15.6 billion. dollars A lot of that is going in to this purchase of the Seahawks, which was for $9.6 billion. dollars Because this vote hasn't happened yet.
Tristan Amundson: We haven't had a chance to hear V-Node really talk ah about the Seahawks or from the Seahawks perspective. At least when you search on YouTube, you can see him discussing AI and the future of AI and work and but and all that and into the 21st century.
Tristan Amundson: Nothing about him talking about the Seahawks just yet. I did think that was kind of funny. He's made all this wealth in... the AI world, and here he has made this incredible purchase in one of the least AI things possible. It's a ball in a field and a bunch of guys shoving and hitting each other. Okay, maybe some AI helped you build some analytics behind the scenes, but it will always come down to that, how well some guys shove and hit each other on a field. And yeah, $9.6 billion. dollars
Tristan Amundson: I'm going to try to give Vino Khosla a clean slate here, but I will say I am nervous about it because throughout 2026, we have seen that Jody Allen and the Allen estate sold the Portland Trailblazers earlier this year to the wrong guy.
Tristan Amundson: If you've been following the and NBA, you have seen the new owner, Tom Dundon, come in and have one of the most confrontational, aggressive, and just generally pessimistic first six months of owning a professional sports team that we've seen in ah in a very long time.
Tristan Amundson: And it gets a little bit confusing because Tom Dundon is also the reigning winner of the Stanley Cup in the NHL with the Carolina Hurricanes. So you can't even say that his methods are ineffective or something like that. We'll see how it translates between the and NHL and the and NBA.
Tristan Amundson: But The Allen sold the the Portland Trailblazers to a guy who clearly does not really care about Portland or Portlanders. He... is kind of holding the fans hostage as he tries to grab their own taxpayer money to try to build a new arena or a refurbished arena, which he could absolutely afford. And he is just kind of using the fans and the the Portland region as ah a kind of pawn in a negotiation. And it's it's just not going very well.
Tristan Amundson: So I'm a little bit surprised that the Allens decided to sell the team to Tom Dundon. I'm surprised that the other and NBA owners approved of of Tom Dundon as an owner. He's done some things that, as as controversial as some of the other and NBA owners are, he's he's made some dramatic and severe cost-cutting measures that none of the owners do.
Tristan Amundson: And i really hope it's a different story for the Seahawks compared to the Trailblazers. um Even though the Allens were not very active in owning the Trailblazers, little bit feeling a little bit more like an absentee owner, even though the Allens aren't based that far away from the team, um the last six months have really made you miss the Allens with the Trailblazers. And hopefully, we'll we'll just see how it goes. We'll just see how it goes. So I'm going to trust but verify Vinod Khosla.
Tristan Amundson: I would look back at the history of how ownership has gone, the numbers are just totally staggering. I'm just laying out the numbers here, the history of NFL sales.
Tristan Amundson: So the Seahawks started as a business in 1974. They would take the field a few years later. Lloyd Nordstrom of the clothing store, he purchased the team for $14 million dollars in We go up to 1988. The team is sold for the first time to Ken Baring for $80 million. dollars We move up to 1997 when Paul Allen buys the team for $200 million. dollars And then after, you know, Allen's been the owner for the majority of the time in the Allen estate. 2026, we move up to $9.6 billion dollars for the value of the team. It's just, I don't, I don't quite understand.
Tristan Amundson: I was also puzzled looking at the last three team sales just across the NFL in general. Most recent team to be purchased was the Washington Commanders in 2023.
Tristan Amundson: That was for $6.05 billion. Before that was the Denver Broncos in 2022. That was $4.65 billion. And then before that, 2018, the Panthers, that's been a pretty controversial ownership group.
Tristan Amundson: Panthers were sold in 2018 for $2.28 Eight long. not quite sure...
Tristan Amundson: eight years ago is not that long i'm not quite sure the Did the values of teams really quadruple in the last eight years? I mean, I guess they did. That's above my pay grade, but that's a little shocking to see. It seems like the best time to get in would have been um before now. the The price tag has really gone up.
Tristan Amundson: All right. Episode number one of Hard Knocks aired just a few days ago. Really appreciated this episode. Hard Knocks has not been the most thrilling television show to watch in the last few years. The the reality of it has kind of gone out the window and you're getting kind of a PR piece.
Tristan Amundson: I'm not going to be a great person to evaluate this episode this season of Hard k Knocks because seeing the Seahawks in it is just totally awesome. And I just have no compass for if it's actually an entertaining show or not just because...
Tristan Amundson: You're seeing all the characters we know and love from the Seahawks in these kind of longer scenes and seeing how they actually interact with each other. Absolutely riveting television.
Tristan Amundson: You'd have to ask a fan from one of the other 31 teams if this is actually a good show or not or if Hard Knocks is back or not. I absolutely loved it. I'm going to kind of empty the notebook here, just kind of going scene by scene through episode number one, just some some random observations as I watch the show.
Tristan Amundson: We kick off with the Super Bowl rings descending from the ceiling. Just an absolutely amazing moment. Then we get the opening shots of the practice facility around Lake Washington, just like Tristan and I talked about in the spring. The scenes of this practice facility are going to shock shock everybody around the league who just thinks that the Seahawks are huddled in the rain all year.
Tristan Amundson: So we go from that, and I think we could step up. the ideas from the social media team when we see the players greeted day one into training camp with a goat on the sidewalk.
Tristan Amundson: So October's coming up. I'm going to be with my friends and their toddlers in some orchards and petting zoos as we get close to Halloween. And there will be some goats there as well.
Tristan Amundson: I just thought we we could have gone back to the drawing board in terms of of really – And I didn't have an idea myself, but, you know, I'm not on the staff. I didn't have all offseason that I kind of need to think about it.
Tristan Amundson: i think we could have had a better idea than ah ah goat on the sidewalk who's just um peeing on the players. We get into the meeting room and we see how Coach Mack runs the meetings. As far as I can tell, he's moving through things pretty quickly.
Tristan Amundson: We hear Mack address the team for maybe three or four combined minutes throughout this episode, which is not that long of a time. I think he runs through these meetings pretty quickly.
Tristan Amundson: Every so often on the screen behind him, you'll see a very classic kind of business-y slide with a bunch of kind of words and arrows moving into different boxes and squares um in a a kind of meaningless business-y way, I would say. but but aside But then the actual content of what he's saying was getting me jacked up. from watching at home. And i you could tell he really put a lot of thought into what he was saying.
Tristan Amundson: and And I think he's a very a very concise and motivating speaker who puts a lot of thought into what he was saying. And I think you could really call the Seahawks the first post-analytics team.
Tristan Amundson: You can look on the team's website. There's a small army of people who are crunching the numbers behind the scenes. It's not that the Seahawks are blind to analytics. But when it comes down to it, when it's time to address everybody all together, these are not the topics Mike McDonald is talking about.
Tristan Amundson: He's talking about pretty emotionally in-depth topics, about togetherness, about improvement, about being your best. And he did so in a way that was, I can't play football, but it would it it made me want to.
Tristan Amundson: We do cut from there to DeMarcus Lawrence pointing out Derek Hall's short shorts on the field. Quite a change of pace there. It did make me wonder if if these are team issues. So Derek Hall is wearing these, but I don't think you can wear something on the practice field that's not team issue.
Tristan Amundson: So I'm curious the origin of these shorts. Derek Hall did not, I don't think Derek Hall, you know, hit the sewing machine himself to create these shorts. So they were pretty shocking to see, but there was an accomplice somewhere along the way who crafted these shorts for Derek Hall to wear.
Tristan Amundson: um HBO, I think of a little couple of production oversteps. I'm not sure if Stephanie McDonald was aware there was a camera on the ceiling watching her doing some parenting while the team was at practice. I felt quite uncomfortable watching that scene, actually. i think she did a great job working with young Jack, but I just felt very intrusive. I wish HBO just had cut the camera off I just cut the camera off at that point. Never mind actually editing the footage and then broadcasting it. I can imagine Stephanie McDonald herself being a little shocked seeing these moments um on TV. She's not really part of the team. Does she know that there's the cameras overhead? I mean, it was it was kind of a weird moment. And then we go from that.
Tristan Amundson: Some of the interviews that they have, they've got this really bizarre angle where we're under people's chins when when they're sitting down for an interview. We're getting a pretty unflattering under chin angle. So yeah, I've got some eight notes for HBO as well along the way. There we go.
Tristan Amundson: We drive home from practice with Devin Witherspoon. And I really appreciated how the show addressed this head on. I thought this was a really fascinating look into the realities of the NFL.
Tristan Amundson: I got the sense as Spoon was driving home, that he was pretty stressed out about the lack of a contract. And i think this was I think this was pretty interesting because even with his rookie deal being drafted as the fifth overall player, Spoon is set for life there.
Tristan Amundson: He is due for a much bigger payday, but I think the stress that he was feeling was about a lot more than that. I think without without the actual contract and pen put to paper,
Tristan Amundson: He's in this situation where he doesn't know if he's about to have to move somewhere completely across the country when he doesn't necessarily want to. I got the feeling that Spoon really wanted to stay with the Seahawks.
Tristan Amundson: There's a pretty high number, though, where he where his contract is going to be pretty big. he He can't really just take a gigantic pay cut just to do it. So i really i really felt for him. he he was He was, I think, stuck between...
Tristan Amundson: Yeah, yeah. just kind of I could see him kind of wondering, okay, does this mean I'm going to get traded now? Does this mean this is my last year here and I'm going to have to pack up and go somewhere else where I'm moving away from my friends and maybe moving to a less successful team?
Tristan Amundson: um and And then my team, the Seahawks, it's it's because they're not giving me the money that that I deserve from from my skill and my production. And at the same time, we know how John Schneider negotiates. He negotiates, I think, in a very fair way.
Tristan Amundson: He understands the totality of where each player is coming from. he doesn't He doesn't make it personal. He knows what each player values. And it it's just one of those situations where there's just there's this salary cap number.
Tristan Amundson: There's a lot of great players on the Seahawks who have earned their money as well. And nobody's at fault here, but it's just kind of this awkward collision. at this point. And I'm really curious how it resolves itself because I think in March and April, as the JSN extension came through, Tristan and I both expected the spoon extension to be coming at any moment and it still hasn't.
Tristan Amundson: So yeah, I mean, that there's there's tension there and I did appreciate the show got into it in a real way that was fair to all parties, I thought. From there we go into the office conversation between Coach Mack and Nick Emanwari.
Tristan Amundson: Doesn't feel great to see Emanwari injured, walking around. You can feel the coaches really want him to get out on the field. I think we know it's not a big deal if Eman's not out there in July. It's December and January and him being at 100% that really matters. So be prepared just like like, hey, this happened last year. He didn't play a lot in September and October.
Tristan Amundson: That just may happen again. I think online we're seeing a lot of people discover who Coach Mack is. I didn't see anything in this episode that surprised me, but I appreciated being able to see him coach and work and talk with people in in a longer, uncut way. And that's what we got with this conversation. i really appreciated that the show let it breathe. We're in there with the two of these guys for like two or three full minutes, which is a pretty long time. And that that might have been the highlight of the episode, honestly. You saw...
Tristan Amundson: Coach Mack working and coaching on a ah very personal level there. We cut from that to Brady Russell getting into the meeting room, dancing to Rhythm of the Night.
Tristan Amundson: The show plays it like a funny moment, and they're definitely trying to get Brady Russell as ah like a funny goofball character. But I did note, Brady Russell, even though he's coming and dancing to this song, let's not forget...
Tristan Amundson: He's one of the first people in this meeting, and you can see he's sitting in the front row and in the center. This is his fourth year with the Seahawks. he He mostly contributes on special teams, and that's how he's he's stuck around with the team.
Tristan Amundson: Even though you kind of you have some funny moments with Brady Russell in this episode, I think you saw he's he's really focused in on stuff. There were some shots of Tai Okada as well in these meetings, just absolutely lasered in on what the coach is saying.
Tristan Amundson: And I think that's how you all these guys who came in from, you know, the ready squad or the bottom half of the roster to make contributions. I think you saw in this episode that didn't happen on accident. These guys come into the facility to work.
Tristan Amundson: From there, we go to the running backs meeting and coach Thomas Hammock really laying it down on the running backs room. At first, this scene really shocked me just because it's a different feel from what we get with the rest of the Seahawks coaching staff. The Seahawks coaching staff really has a lot of introverts. on it. And that that goes from Coach Mack, even Clint Kubiak last year, introverted guy, replaced with Brian Fleury, another introverted guy, Adam and Dirty, not a very loud guy. So at first I was kind of shocked, like, wow, this is just a different flavor from what we normally get from the Seahawks coaches.
Tristan Amundson: Then I looked into it a little more and and it made a lot more sense to me. So Thomas Hammock, He came in from Northern Illinois University, where he was the head coach the last few years. He engineered the pretty shocking upset over Notre Dame a couple years ago in college football.
Tristan Amundson: But before that, from like 2014 to 2018, Hammock was the running back's coach with the Baltimore Ravens. So on the same staff as Mike McDonald. 2018 is a pretty long time ago.
Tristan Amundson: i thought it was really interesting that Mike obviously had a positive working relationship with Thomas Hammock, remembered that, and you know it took a while. This is his third year being the head coach of the Seahawks, but this opportunity came up and he hired somebody that he trusted. And like we've talked about, Coach Mack has done a great job of filling his staff out with both people that he knows and also people that he doesn't have a previous connection to.
Tristan Amundson: And I think that combination is pretty excellent. So after after seeing that, it made a lot of sense to me that this is somebody that Coach Mack really trusts, even though they clearly have pretty different styles.
Tristan Amundson: We move on to Jadarian Price, a pretty nice highlight film of him in practice. What I noticed is we we we saw a lot of clips of him being pretty great in the passing game.
Tristan Amundson: That was kind of one of the only on-field things I took away from this episode. We see him catching some passes pretty far down the field. Not just in the segment about him, but there's an earlier segment in the episode where Sam Darnold and the offense is kind of ripping through the defense. And if you look, Price is also catching some passes in that sequence.
Tristan Amundson: I appreciated that. So we'll we'll see what happens in the preseason for sure. That's something I'm looking out for. Price contributing in the passing game as well. We go to a coaches meeting where everybody's talking about how important it will be when the pads come on.
Tristan Amundson: My observation, this is one of the best training facilities in the NFL. it It looked really stuffy in there. I think we could get the coaches ah ah big, I just felt the heat in that room. It felt a little too small. There's tables every which way.
Tristan Amundson: i was a little puzzled. The coaches weren't in the big team meeting room. kind of that bigger amphitheater that we're getting familiar with. Looked really stuffy in there. I just kind of felt like everybody farting and being sweaty after a long day of practice. And it it kind of looked like a nightmare.
Tristan Amundson: We go from there to the montage of Cooper Cup chatting with just about everybody. i absolutely love this montage. Hard Knocks had maybe about a week to build this montage. So all, you know, Cooper Cup is moving around in an office chair and talking to somebody's ear pretty much constantly. It was a pretty long montage of him doing that.
Tristan Amundson: Not a lot of time to to build the montage. It had to get you excited as a Seahawks fan and just completely puzzled that the Rams let this go. We do end the episode on a down note. We got some pushing and shoving in practice.
Tristan Amundson: I understand you're not really going to get through an NFL training camp without this happening. You did hope it wasn't going to happen in the first like couple days of like a mild July, and you still ah have this shoving going on.
Tristan Amundson: Usually, I think that stuff kind of happens on like August 18th when it's 95 degrees somewhere in training camp. This was pretty early on. However... You did see the team address it ah head on and ready to move on in just a matter of minutes. So obviously ah that's going to be included in the final cut that's riveting television.
Tristan Amundson: Is it a big deal that's going to affect the team in the long term? No, it's not. And I think you saw that because... the the The coaches and the players really worked to not just address the fight, but like the emotions underneath the fight, including Brady Russell and Derek Hall.
Tristan Amundson: And I'm sure that is absolutely ancient history at this point, even though that occurred just a couple days ago. That fight occurred just a couple of days before that episode went to air. That's a brief tour through episode one. i absolutely loved it. Can't wait for the next few.
Tristan Amundson: Really appreciate you listening to the show. It's Saturday, August 8th right now. We got episode two coming out on HBO on Tuesday. And then next Saturday, the Seahawks' first preseason game, their only home preseason game.
Tristan Amundson: of August. It'll be really great to watch some actual football played on the field, even though August, of course, always is a tease with preseason football, but we're getting closer.
Tristan Amundson: We're getting closer to the actual season and a Super Bowl defense. Thanks for listening again, and go Hawks.
