The Seattle Seahawks signed former Cowboys cornerback Trevon Diggs on Wednesday, a day after having him into VMAC for a visit on Tuesday. Diggs should immediately compete with Seattle’s other corners to be an outside option in Mike Macdonald’s nickel or dime defense in Week 1 against the New England Patriots.
While Hard Knocks showcased how John Schneider was able to convince Terrion Arnold to choose the Seahawks over other suitors, the next day was about actually bringing in a cornerback who is allowed to practice and play immediately.
Part I of the Super Joes Q&A was posted on Tuesday. Here are the rest of the answers to your Seahawks questions this week.
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Ryan: Where do JS’s attentions turn to next with the Spoon deal done and Arnold “signed” to the roster?
Apparently still at cornerback, as the Seahawks signed Trevon Diggs on Wednesday.
Diggs, a second-round pick in 2020 (and coincidentally also out of Alabama), led the NFL with 11 interceptions in 2021. He was one of those “you can’t miss this” stories of that season, as it seemed like Diggs was always coming down with a pick somehow.
However, it also felt like Diggs was also always allowing a big play to get behind him: He allowed nine touchdowns in his first two seasons.
Over the past four seasons, Diggs has intercepted six passes. Over the past four seasons, Diggs has only played in 22 of a possible 51 games. He tore his ACL in 2023, just after signing a contract extension with Dallas, and missed 15 games. Diggs was finally waived by the Cowboys at the end of last season, catching on for two games with the Packers.
He has remained unsigned until now as teams fear there’s just nothing left in the tank despite not turning 28 until next month.
The Seahawks have Devon Witherspoon and Josh Jobe as their two definitive starters, while Nick Emmanwori figures to be the nickel again but is still working his way back from knee surgery.
Nehemiah Pritchett and Noah Igbinoghene battle for a place on the depth chart while rookie third-round pick Julian Neal is also missing practices and seems unlikely to contribute soon; signing Diggs (and preparing to sign Arnold) only heightens the likelihood that the team is not optimistic about Neal’s health situation.
Rookies Andre Fuller and Michael Dansby do not look good right now and may be practice squad hopefuls going into final cuts.
The team has not officially signed Arnold and will probably not do so until after final cuts because he has been placed on the commissioner’s exempt list. It would come as a shock if he’s not signed eventually though.
Rusty: She how many members of the combined 70 person roster will be filled by people not currently on the roster? I’m guessing 3.
Last season, there were 12 players on the 70-man roster on December 1 who weren’t on the roster on September 1. That means that over 17 percent of the entire roster, including practice squad, had changed just during the first three months of the season.
And on the 53-man roster, you had additions as big as Rashid Shaheed and as small as Myles Gaskin. The practice squad will change many times between now and later, so regardless of the answer to your question, the moves never stop anyway.
Certainly Seattle has their eyes open for potential additions every day, as evidenced in just the last three weeks of camp, and I would think your guess of three is the bare minimum answer.
Chip Mac: Rashad Rochelle great put return Saturday begs the question who are the kick off and/or put returner this season. I’m assuming that Rashid Shaheed is WR only in 2026.
Although Shaheed said at the beginning of camp that he’d like to be the returner, the Seahawks are less thrilled about the proposition of risking their $18 million receiver on special teams.
The answer is that I don’t think there is an answer yet.
For the simple fact that even if Shaheed is a better receiver than Devin Hester and Dante Hall (two elite returners who teams tried to make work on offense but it never quite did), he still needs to go out there and prove it. Not for one game, not for two games, not for four games. Seattle needs to see Shaheed consistently be an offensive weapon, a deep threat, a valuable target for Sam Darnold.
There’s a lot of reasonable optimism that he’s going to be far more valuable to the offense than he was last season, based on offseason workouts and camp. That’s great, and that’s what he was signed to do.
However, if Mike Macdonald gets to a point when he feels Shaheed’s offensive contributions are lacking, and the team needs a spark on special teams, why would you waste one of the best returners in the NFL? Even if Shaheed is having a good year on offense, I still think Seattle’s gonna see him as an option there.
For example, what if the Seahawks are down 10-3 in the fourth quarter of a game and the other team is punting? Shaheed’s going to field that punt!
That being said, Seattle may have more options than any team.
Tory Horton is probably the punt returner, if healthy (had more yards per return last season than Shaheed)
Jadarian Price was an elite kickoff return man in college
Emmanuel Henderson should be in the running, if he makes the team
George Holani is more than capable on kickoffs
Cody White is an option, even as a practice squad elevation if the Seahawks want to give him a shot
Certainly Rochelle is making a case, but I don’t think he’ll make final cuts
I think the Seahawks could open Week 1 with PR Horton, KR Holani and KR Henderson. I don’t think Price is an ideal option, but the whole point behind the redesigned kickoff is to make it safer.
Plenty of ways Macdonald could go (probably more his decision than Harbaugh’s), including Shaheed. Seattle’s chances of winning the Super Bowl last season would have gone down considerably without Shaheed’s returns.
Scott M: Did Drake Thomas change his number? I swear it was him with a different number...
Thomas changed back to his college number: 32.
Undrafted linebacker Aaron Smith is now wearing 42, Thomas’s number last season.
Burgdawg: I liked your overview of Milroe. At first glance, Milroe reminds me somewhat of Anthony Richardson. Do you see them as similar prospects? Also, who are some historical examples of QBs with a profile like Milroe who actually sat for a few years and turned into high-level starters?"
Imagine if Anthony Richardson had spent two years as the starter at Alabama. I honestly don’t know if that would have increased his draft stock…or tanked it.
Instead, Richardson spent two years on the bench, then one very uneven, inaccurate season as the starter at Florida. It’s why I couldn’t fathom him as a first-round pick, let alone fourth overall. People were comparing him to Cam Newton, even though in Newton’s case he was coming off of one of the greatest seasons by a quarterback in college football history.
If Richardson had transferred to a program better suited to highlight his talents instead of going into the draft, I think he would have either Cam’d or flamed out. That risk is probably why he went into the draft and got paid.
In Milroe’s case, he also spent two years as a backup before he got his chance to start. This is always a red flag to me. Not a death knell, just a red flag. Because NFL quarterbacks are not the best of the best…
They’re the best of the best of the best of the best.
In Sam Darnold’s second college season, he threw 31 touchdowns for USC. Matthew Stafford was a true freshman starter at Georgia. Sometimes there are extenuating circumstances and riding the bench for two years isn’t a big deal. Milroe was sitting behind Bryce Young, it makes sense.
Richardson was sitting behind Kyle Trask and Emory Jones.
That being said, I understand why Richardson was a better draft prospect. He’s 6’4, 236, he’s fast, he’s an unusually-sized human being who can throw the ball very far. Milroe is 6’1, 210ish, he’s fast too, and he also has a strong arm. But the margin for error is greater for a quarterback who is shorter.
Russell Wilson was a great college quarterback. Milroe was not. There were more than a couple times during his two-year tenure that the team seriously considered benching him for Ty Simpson. He had four years to learn, he had both Nick Saban and Kalen DeBoer as teachers, he was watching a Heisman-winning quarterback from the sidelines.
Now he’s on a Super Bowl team. Darnold could be an MVP candidate. His rookie season offensive coordinator was the top hire of the coaching cycle. The team has two receivers who have won Offensive Player of the Year.
It’s as though Richardson was “grown in a lab” whereas Milroe has been put through QUARTERBACK DEVELOPMENT GRAD SCHOOL in a way that so few prospects ever get to experience. And I believe he works hard too. So will it click some day?
That would be great for Seattle if it did.
I understand asking if there’s a comparison. There are similarities. I would rather bet on Milroe than Richardson, for what it’s worth.
La’au: This time of year the only thing that really matters is how people are performing in these practices and practice games. I am hearing people like Ray Rhodes saying Beau Stephens is slow laterally and for him to have a long career he will need to be a master technician. That is not a ringing endorsement as far as I am concerned. Any evaluations of young players you feel is warranted or coming from an educated perspective rather than mindless regurgitation of the national press?
I do not know that quote by Rhodes, but Stephens was a fifth-round pick in a weak draft class going into a league full of teams that need guard help—“148th pick of the draft” is not a ringing endorsement either.
I’d be shocked if he was ready for the NFL by Week 1 of his first season. I think fans created more of a mystique around Stephens and the pick than there was a realistic belief that he was going to be a slam dunk who didn’t come with big “if” statements in order to make it in the league.
To be fair, John Schneider trading a 2027 fourth-round pick to get him fanned those flames a bit.
As far as preseason hype that makes sense to me, Tyrice Knight is only 25 and he’s flying around the field like a starting linebacker. He was also once a day three pick who “would need to get better at a few things if he’s ever going to have a long career”.
Maybe Stephens will become a better technician over the next three years. If he doesn’t, it’s not a big deal.
Elijah Arroyo is another, albeit maybe more obvious to you. And maybe Nehemiah Pritchett could be the new Josh Jobe. There’s another former day three pick who wasn’t expected to come into the league without flaws that may take years to fix.
JohnnyLondon: I find it intriguing that backup QBs on the best two teams in the NFL (well, last season at least) both went to the same college, and the one drafted in round 1 this year - Ty Simpson - was the back-up to the one drafted in the 3rd last year - Milroe.
There’s been quite a bit of talk (apparently) about how good Simpson looked in the first preseason game, and how far off the mark Milroe looked on our side. Just what is the true picture here? Naturally I want terrible things to happen to the Rams, so hoping he’s a moderate floor/low ceiling type of guy, whose floor is just higher than Milroe’s right now.
Talked about this a bit already on Tuesday. Milroe was just ahead of Simpson in 2023 and Saban didn’t think a change was warranted. DeBoer was grateful to Milroe for helping keep players at Alabama after Saban retired, and was probably loyal to a fault.
There’s only so many times I can say it before people will accuse me of being a hater instead of simply telling the truth: Jalen Milroe was not a good college quarterback. Simpson was not a great college quarterback, but he was better than Milroe and he impressed some NFL teams with an advanced knowledge of schemes, reading defenses, playing under-center quarterback.
Simpson is a better pro prospect than Milroe, but I think 13th overall was still too high. There’s nothing to see there so far, and fans are going to have to dig deep and find a way to be patient (for several years probably) before knowing if the Rams got a good quarterback or not.
And same goes for Milroe. I’m patient. I’m just saying there’s nothing there yet to make anybody believe he’s good enough for the league right now.
Bob: Is the Milroe project a wash if his preseason continues to look like it has thus far? Is he bouncing off his ceiling already? If so, I'm guessing he's got one foot out the door and the other on a banana peel. Too early to write him off? Begs the question in my relatively uninformed noggin: What's the crop of QB's in the next draft look like?
They say it looks good. But they always like to say that a year before the draft.
I don’t anticipate the Seahawks drafting a quarterback in 2027, with or without Milroe, but then again we haven’t really seen John Schneider be able to cut loose yet. We’ve just had three drafts without Pete Carroll now and already he’s drafted one quarterback, traded a quarterback, and signed a big free agent quarterback, so nobody can really say yet.
If all goes to plan, Darnold will sign an extension next year. Which may not stop the team from bringing in another quarterback in the draft.
Grant: Why is Cooper Kupp in every QB meeting on Hard Knocks? He’s the only WR there and he’s always there. Is this something he’s doing by choice because he’s the hardest working guy in the league, or is he being asked to attend by the coaches. Perhaps he’s preparing for his post player coaching career and the QB room is the place to be. You’d probably need to be employed by Schneider to answer this question.
Guess I’m overdue for that job offer from Schneider then.
This is actually what he’s always done. Even as a rookie with the Rams in 2017, Kupp would join the quarterback meetings so that he could learn more about the offense:
"He's not your typical rookie," Rams offensive coordinator Matt LaFleur said. "It's funny because a lot of times, after they're done with the receiver meeting, he'll come in the quarterback meeting and he'll listen to us. He loves football. Very intelligent player, and we're lucky to have him."
Kupp comes from a quarterback family also, so I think he’s just a guy who wasn’t necessarily built for the position with his body, but thinks like a quarterback in his brain.