Since offseason workouts, head coach Mike Macdonald has been preaching the idea of "running it forward," meaning the reigning Super Bowl champs will not be "defending" a title, but instead reinventing a new identity for a new team.
Despite the current roster looking very similar to the one that beat the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl, the players and coaches alike all know this is a new season and they are treating it as such.
"The Super Bowl was great," Jaxon Smith-Njigba said, "Love to have it, but at the end of the day, we have to brush that off to the side. No one really cares once we line it up first snap of the season."
And while that is the team's mindset, two things can be true. The Seahawks can set out to run it forward, while also acknowledging the difference winning a Super Bowl has made for them.
"You can feel the excitement and the energy," Smith-Njigba said. "Having a great year is awesome. We want to repeat that of course, but coming in, there's been a new energy. It's a fresh start and we're ready to get going and ready to take the next step as a team and a new beginning so to speak. We're excited and juiced up to get it going."
Outside of the additions of rookies and free agent signings, majority of the team knows what it takes to reach the pinnacle that a Super Bowl win is and they also know the feeling of success that accomplishing that achievement brought. For Smith-Njigba that is what makes him excited to take on this season.
"It's going to be a new story, but we want to create a new story with this upcoming season," he said. "It's different. We have different guys, different people in the building. It's going to be a unique story and a unique challenge, different from last year."
The 2025 team's success also hasn't changed who the core identity of the team is either. Smith-Njigba said "no one in the building" has changed, and that includes head coach Mike Macdonald.
On Sunday before Seattle's second training camp practice, Macdonald spoke to the team during a team meeting, giving them a little nugget of information that he wanted the team to take with them. Sunday's words of wisdom was a story about the 1991 Chicago Bulls team. That '91 Bulls team was coming off an NBA Championship-winning season, similar to the position the Seahawks are in now.
"His team meeting was on point today," Julian Love said about Macdonald's meeting. "Talking about the early (Chicago) Bulls teams, like the '91 team and how they got over the hump. The idea of (Michael) Jordan being the scoring champ for years before that, but still not getting over that hump of the (Detroit) Pistons. Him being selfless enough to dial it back a little bit and understand that 'We' gets the job done. When you start to play team ball that Phil Jackson incorporated, that's when you see the good stuff happening. The new little nugget he gave to us was that '12 as One' is real. The more we dive into and invest into each other, the more we'll receive out of this whole deal."
Macdonald's core tenants, 12 as One, M.O.B, Chasing Edges and his process-driven mindset have stayed the same, but they may evolve, just like the team is.
Love said, "The idea is those pillars we had last year, do we want to create new ones? Do we want to have the same kind of umbrella, but really think differently about what makes it up? Who we are in this current day? I think the leadership is like, 'I think we want to shape this thing and learn it and start from ground level and incorporate everybody along… We're building this whole unit. Everyone's going to be incorporated into how we build things, and it's a conscious choice. It could be easy to be like, 'Let's keep on going, we were good last year. Same theme.' But we are we're dialed in to building it up how we want to build it up this year."
