The Seattle Seahawks’ latest run of player interviews is offering a pretty clear window into what this team values, and the message keeps coming back to the same thing: veteran presence matters.
A.J. Barner, now the starting tight end after taking over the job last offseason and pushing Noah Fant into free agency, came off as exactly the kind of steady, hard-nosed voice you’d want in that room. He talked about the increased physical edge in the Seahawks’ games against the Los Angeles Rams last year, and he didn’t hide from the contact side of it.
“People like to say, you know, ‘games aren’t different’, but I like to have a little more when we play division games.”
He doubled down when the Rams came up again, making it clear he respects the competition but doesn’t want to be coddled by it.
“And the Rams got really good players. They got really good EDGEs, and those EDGEs are competitors too.
I’m one of those people that, you know, I’m not really going to love up the EDGE’s. Some guys would be like, ‘man, you should be getting paid more’, or something like that… like, I like to get after it with those guys and let them know that I’m here to compete.
And those guys are with that, so I have a lot of respect for them.”
Barner also had a strong answer when the conversation turned to facing Philip Rivers, who had not retired and was still operating like a future Hall of Famer. His point was simple: experience can beat out flash.
“I think it shows you that, you know, with that knowledge of the game, you can really make a lot of plays. Like you don’t have to be in your best physical shape; you don’t have to be moving light years ahead of everyone else. Like, if you know defenses and you know what you’re looking at and what you’re looking for- it can make a huge difference.”
He added: “as a young player, I think that’s one way to look at it. When you see a guy that’s been in the league for so long, it’s like, yeah, I mean, he just came right off the streets from five years.
And it’s like, he knows what he’s looking for. So, I think that’s goes a long way.”
That theme lines up neatly with what Jaxon Smith-Njigba said in the previous episode about his relationship with Sam Darnold. Smith-Njigba was blunt about how much he values that connection.
“I love building that relationship. I tend to be good friends with my quarterbacks, um, in the past. Sam, obviously building that rapport with him, just becoming lifelong teammates, lifelong friends… it’s always cool.”
He also described how the two handled mistakes and built chemistry through direct communication.
“When I would make a mistake, or he would make a mistake, we would always have clear communication, like: ‘hey, this is what I need you to do, and we’ll get it the next rep.’ I knew that was going to be something special and something that we could build on.”
Barner had another veteran-minded moment when he praised Eric Saubert for the walk-off 2-point conversion in the Week 16 overtime comeback win that clinched the division and the top seed in the NFC.
“a guy like ‘Sauby’ just does his job, over, and over and over and did his job on that play, and that’s really what it is. And, you know, the ball found him because he was in the right spot at the right time.”
Taken together, the comments from Smith-Njigba and Barner point to the same thing: Seattle has built around players who understand how to communicate, how to compete and how to lean on experience. That mix of talent, mindset and veteran knowledge looks like a deliberate part of what the Seahawks are trying to do on Mike Macdonald’s team.
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