Ask any Seahawks player or coach what made their Super Bowl winning team so special, and they will point to the connection that last year's team had, to the closeness of that particular group of players.
"I would say how close we were," quarterback Sam Darnold said this offseason when asked what made the Seahawks champions. "The chemistry, the bond, the love that we had for each other. I think it's as simple as that, I really do. Just coming into work every single day and enjoying it."
That bond for any team is formed throughout an offseason, training camp and regular season, but for the Seahawks over the past couple of years under Mike Macdonald, a key part of that team bonding has been heading on the road for joint practices. That wasn't something the Seahawks had done in the past before Macdonald's arrival, but in the past two seasons, the Seahawks have practiced in Nashville with the Titans and in Green Bay with the Packers ahead of preseason matchups. This week, the Seahawks will head back to Nashville and practice with the Titans ahead of Sunday's game at Nissan Stadium.
The on-field work, which allows starters to compete against a different team in a more controlled environment, is an important part of the trip, to be sure, but so too is what goes on off the field—the team meals, the extra time on the road without distractions of home, the rookie talent show that brings a lot of laughs.
"When we went to Green Bay last year, that's when we realized how special of a team that we had," said guard Grey Zabel. "I thought we had a fairly good joint practice with them. You're obviously going to have the rookie talent show to bring the team together and have fun and have the joys of being a football team. It brought us together and showed us our first road trip together and how things work, how to operate, and what to expect."
With teams playing their starters increasingly less often in the preseason, there is even more value in the reps players will get in Friday's practice, as veteran safety Julian Love outlined on Tuesday.
"It's a lot of intentional reps," Love said. "You're not just going through a game setting. You're doing one-on-ones against these guys, you're doing third down period, like certain concept periods against them but you're going full go. It's cool where you get intentional work. It's always good to see other ones. You can read and react because me as a defensive back, it's nice when you can play a ball in a different setting against different people, get some different tendencies and stuff. We're going to value it; the whole team is going to take advantage of these reps because they're important."
Love also appreciates what the team gets out of these trips outside of the time dedicated to football activities.
"These past few years with Mike have been a pivotal point in our season, our journey," Love said. "Two years ago in Tennessee, last year in Green Bay. It was the first time everyone let their hair down and enjoyed hanging out with each other. Traveling with the team is always fun, we love traveling with each other because it's a time where we get a break and be with each other. Playing against another team, that competitive space is fun. Then we go out to dinner, do the rookie show, all that stuff is a lot of fun. I know a lot of the guys are excited about it."
The way players have stood up for each other when practices occasionally get heated is also part of the bond the Seahawks have formed. Coaches don't condone the skirmishes that tend to break out at joint practices, but they are often a reality of that practice format, and as linebacker Ernest Jones IV pointed out this offseason, the team's willingness to battle for each other was another key part of the connectedness of that group. Jones wasn't speaking specifically of last year's joint practice when he spoke on that topic, but last year's practice in Green Bay was part of that team's journey, nonetheless.
"Those are guys in that locker room I'd go to war with," Jones said on the Making A Champion series that aired this offseason. "If a fight broke out, I know they're going to fight. We might not be the best fighters, but to be in there to fight is the thing. That's what guys figured out early on, 'man, this guy will fight for me, why shouldn't I do the same'?' When a team has that—we're saying these things, and teams are going to come out there and try to mimic and copy these things—you can't mimic real and what's truth, and that's what we had here."
