Nick Emmanwori thrills at Day 8 of Seahawks training camp
Published 9:00 pm Thursday, July 31, 2025
Another day, another Nick Emmanwori Special.
Thursday, 11-on-11 scrimmaging in full pads. Rookie quarterback Jalen Milroe throws deep down the right sideline. Emmanwori races from the middle of the field to his left. The 220-pound safety who has often lined up as an outside linebacker during this Seahawks training camp dived, fully extending his 6-foot-3 body. The second-round draft choice caught the ball just before it hit the ground. He got to his feet and ran, diagonally to the opposite sideline.
Emmanwori ran through the offensive players standing along that sideline. He ran all the way off the field, to the fence that separates fans attending practice standing at the bottom of the grass berm from where they watch.
Kids raced over to Emmanwori at the fence. Devon Witherspoon and Riq Woolen, Seattle’s starting cornerbacks, ran over the scene and cheered. Emmanwori posed for fans’ pictures. Then he grabbed one boy’s souvenir football plus the fan’s pen. He signed the white panel of the kid’s ball.
Witherspoon and Woolen roared. The fans screamed.
Emmanwori laughed.
Yes, all is very well with the 21-year-old man-child Macdonald is moving all over his defense, with the starters and reserves. And it’s all been a success for Emmanwori over the first eight days of his first NFL training camp.
“We keep giving him stuff,” Macdonald said, “and he keeps executing.”
The 37-year-old defensive wizard remains mindful of not giving Emmanwori too much too soon that would make him think too much, instead of just playing.
“You have to be careful that you don’t take the playmaker out of the player,” Macdonald said. “That’s kind of on my mind.”
There is zero evidence so far to suggest any of that is happening. Emmanwori is a star of this early Seahawks preseason.
“A guy like me, you’ve got to tell me exactly what to do, all the time,” Macdonald said.
“A guy like him, you’ve got to let him go play. Give him the intent of the play, kind of a ‘commanders’ intent’ type of idea,” the coach and son of West Point graduate said. “And then let it go come to life.”
It’s way live for Emmanwori right now.
It was the second time this week Emmanwori picked off Milroe with a flashy play. Monday, he faked a blitz off the edge in the alignment of an outside linebacker, dropped into the short flat and intercepted the rookie’s pass coming off his goal line. Emmanwori easily returned that for a touchdown.
After that play, Macdonald chided the rookie safety for how he was carrying the ball on his way to the end zone.
Then the coach who has already likened Emmanwori to All-Pro safety Kyle Hamilton Macdonald coached in Baltimore turned to his rookie and said: “Hey man, you having fun out here, or what?!”
“He keeps learning. And he keeps executing and keeps making plays,” Macdonald said of Emmanwori. “He’s got a great enthusiasm. Anytime you’ve got a coaching point for him, he’s very receptive towards it.
“We’ve said this kind of ad nauseam here, but he’s a very fun player to coach. The vets in the (safety) room are doing a great job with him, too, Julian (Love), Coby (Bryant).
“It’s a good group.” Devon Witherspoon, always joking, always chirping on the field, is already bringing rookie safety Nick Emmanwori into the club just 5 practices into OTAs.
It wasn’t that Milroe’s pass was bad. Emmanwori’s play was better.
Milroe had perhaps his strongest overall day of his young NFL career on Thursday. The third-round draft choice from Alabama in May was sharp, throwing the ball on a line down the field. He completed a dart to tight end Brady Russell down the middle of the field on a seam route for about 30 yards during a 2-minute drill. Multiple times, he kept the ball and ran around left (twice) and right (once) end on bootlegs that appeared to be runs called by new offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak.
Those fake handoff and roll-out keepers are likely to be the plays Kubiak will have for Milroe, the third-string quarterback behind starter Sam Darnold, in special packages for each game this season.
Oluwatimi makes his case
Macdonald said the coaches are still a ways from determining the starters at center and right guard on the offensive line.
“It will probably go into the preseason games,” the coach said.
Those start next Thursday, Aug. 7, against Pete Carroll’s Las Vegas Raiders at Lumen Field.
Olu Oluwatimi is making his case to be the starting center over Jalen Sundell and Christian Haynes.
Oluwatimi, the starter to end last season after 27-year-old Connor Williams abruptly retired in October, was the first-team center Thursday. In one-on-one pass rush drills, he lined up outside to face four-time Pro Bowl defensive end DeMarcus Lawrence. Oluwatimi stopped Lawrence on two consecutive snaps.
The starting tackles have had trouble doing that this summer.
At right guard, it was Anthony Bradford’s turn to be the starter, over Haynes. Macdonald has been waiting for the rugged Bradford, the team’s fourth-round pick from LSU in 2023, to make a move once pads came on this week.
He has.
“A.B.’s been really intentional,” Macdonald said. “You see that. You see his ability, which is really, which is really great to see. It adds an opposite, great element of physicality.”
“Christian’s right in there. And then, you know, Jalen is doing a great job, too.
“We gotta get that figured out pretty soon.”
Haynes had a rough day, at the backup-center spot he’s been working on some since last winter. He sailed a shotgun snap 4 feet over the head of backup quarterback Drew Lock. The offense had to abort a second play when Oluwatimi and Lock messed up a direct-snap exchange. Oluwatimi then sent a third shotgun snap high that the 6-4 Lock had to jump to snare.
Sundell replaced Oluwatimi. Sundell, the 2024 rookie free-agent from North Dakota State, has been getting more time at right guard — and Thursday right tackle — than center this week.
That’s added to the impression Oluwatimi may be about to win the center job.
“It’s coming into focus a little,” Macdonald said.
