The Seahawks bond over “walk and talks.”

That’s their head coach’s initiative. They have small groups of players walk with coaches around the headquarters building and the practice field. They share and talk about themselves, not football.

Their position meetings become revealing, introspective discussions of a player’s why.

Leonard Williams says they have a “lifetime” bond, one that will endure long and far beyond the football field. He says this bond has changed his life since he arrived in Seattle, in a trade from the New York Giants in 2023.

“This has been the best defense I’ve ever been a part of,” the 11-year Pro Bowl veteran defensive lineman said a few months ago. “And it’s not because of stats or anything like on paper. ... It is just the togetherness.

“The brotherhood that we have on this defense is really special.”

Now the Seahawks’ unique culture, their secret sauce they say is the reason they won the Super Bowl, is in danger of getting exposed. With the rest of the NFL and world watching and taking notes. They don’t like it.

John Schneider was far less than thrilled when commissioner Roger Goodell called to tell the general manager the league selected the Seahawks, for the first time, to be the team that NFL Films will record daily on and off the field in training camp for “Hard Knocks” episodes airing on HBO this summer.

Schneider didn’t hide his feeling about it this week when asked on his weekly radio show Thursday.

“I mean, we avoided it for 17 years, so....,” the GM said on KIRO AM.

He laughed.

“I’m just always worried about telling our story,” Schneider said.

“I mean, I get it, from a PR standpoint, a marketing standpoint. “We’re just very protective of how we do things, what our culture looks like.

“We’re going to make it as positive as we possibly can,” Schneider said of “Hard Knocks, “without sharing as much information as we possibly can.”

He laughed again. He wasn’t joking.

John Schneider’s tone, body language and words make it obvious how the GM and the #Seahawks feel about the NFL picking them to be the Hard Knocks training camp team on HBO weekly in August.

He says they are very “protective” of how they do things and of their culture pic.twitter.com/V1DuSF710c

— Gregg Bell (@gbellseattle) April 3, 2026

Decisions suboptimal for Seattle

Most of 2025, almost all the recent postseason, went the Seahawks’ way.

They won 17 of 20 games. They won the NFC West for the first time since 2020. They rode the top seed and home field through the conference playoffs to Seattle’s first Super Bowl in 11 years. Then the Seahawks dominated New England in Super Bowl 60 in Feburaryfor the franchise’s first NFL title since the Legion of Boom team’s 2013 season.

A few weeks after the team’s raucous Super Bowl victory parade through downtown Seattle, free agency began. It went mostly as Schneider and the Seahawks wanted.

They didn’t chase out of their budget plans the money Super Bowl MVP Kenneth Walker, safety Coby Bryant, outside linebacker Boye Mafe and cornerback Riq Woolen sought. They all got it, elsewhere. Walker signed with Kansas City, Bryant with Chicago, Mafe with Cincinnati and Woolen with Philadelphia for more than Seattle wanted to pay.

So Schneider retained his more affordable core to that brotherhood.

He spent most of his free-agency money ($51 million) on keeping Rashid Shaheed, the Pro Bowl kick returner and wide receiver that was perhaps the team’s MVP over the latter half of last season.

And he re-signed All-Pro Jaxon Smith-Njigba. The NFL offensive player of the year for last season got the richest contract for a wide receiver in NFL history, up to $168.6 million with $120 million guaranteed.

But this hasn’t been a perfect offseason for Schneider and the Seahawks. This last week has been what the GM sees as two strikes against his team.

The Super Bowl champions are learning they are kings of only their own domain. As in, their Virginia Mason Athletic Center in Renton.

About the time Schneider got the call from Goodell about “Hard Knocks,” down I-5 in Olympia Monday Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson signed into law a new state millionaire tax. You may have heard of it. Households in Washington that bring in more than $1 million annually get taxed at 9.9% on that income, beginning in 2028.

The law could face efforts to block it in state courts. On Friday, opponents of the new income tax asked the Washington Supreme Court to allow them to pursue a referendum that would give voters a chance to repeal the law in the November general election.

Washington has been one of five states with NFL teams that have no income tax. Texas (with the Cowboys and Texans), Florida (with the Dolphins, Buccaneers and Jaguars), Tennessee (home of the Titans) and Nevada (with the Raiders) do not.

Schneider said he and the Seahawks have used to their advantage to sign players over other teams.

“It’s going to affect us,” Schneider said of the millionaire this week, talking to reporters at the NFL spring meeting in Phoenix. He called the lack of income tax in Washington a perk, “a bonus,” but not a deciding factor when players decide to sign with the Seahawks over, say, the 49ers, Rams or Chargers in California. California has an income tax up to 13%, one of the nation’s highest.

In 2024, veteran safety Rayshawn Jenkins laughed when he said part of why he signed with the Seahawks that spring over a free-agent offer from the 49ers was Washington not having an income tax.

Schneider helped Jenkins, who now plays with the Cleveland Browns, realize that. It’s been part of his pitch to free agents to come here.

In mid-March, when the bill was getting signed towards law, Schneider said on his radio show the Seahawks were going to feel a “sting” from the new millionaire tax. The GM may need to change his pitch to free agents to sign with Seattle and keep all their money.

“There were a bunch of agents texting me the other day like, ‘Hey, can’t use that anymore, buddy,’” Schneider said last month on KIRO radio. “I think it is for all the pro teams here in town.

“It’s always been a huge attraction, especially competing with the California teams. It’s been a big deal for us. So, it’s going to sting, from a recruiting standpoint and what that looks like. I’m sure (former Seahawks general managers) Mike Reinfeldt and Mickey Loomis and all the (salary) cap guys that have been here before, too, are looking at this like, ‘Dang!’

“It’s going to sting, no question about it.”

This is GM John Schneider's almost-subtle way of supporting Derick Hall, the #Seahawks LB the NFL suspended for today's game at Carolina for stepping on a fallen Rams offensive lineman. https://t.co/qLoDXIQWBs

— Gregg Bell (@gbellseattle) December 28, 2025

They’ll be OK

Now, just because two decisions way outside their domain didn’t go their way doesn’t mean this offseason is going awry for the Seahawks.

Yes, they have only four picks in the draft that begins April 23. That’s by design. Schneider told me and a handful of other team beat reporters at the league’s scouting combine in Indianapolis five weeks ago he and his scouting staff assessed last year this year’s draft was relatively weak. They see next year’s draft as far deeper in NFL-ready talent. That’s why the team traded two third-day picks in this month’s draft to New Orleans in November to get Shaheed.

Through all the rumors and noise around free agency, get this: The Seahawks are bringing back 10 of the 11 starters on offense and — by re-signing cornerback Josh Jobe at $8 million per year — all 11 of the starters on the top-ranked defense that won the Super Bowl. Coach Mike Macdonald said this week 12-year veteran DeMarcus Lawrence, the Pro Bowl defensive end who will turn 34 this month, has indicated to him he’s returning to play in 2026.

That’s 21 of 22 starters — plus your kicker (Jason Myers), punter (Michael Dickson) and long-snapper (Chris Stoll, also on a new deal) — coming back for next season. In this salary-capped NFL that hard to do.

Especially for a defending Super Bowl champion, whose players often leave for new riches elsewhere.

“We are trying to be, like, really careful with our language. We are not trying to say we are ‘running anything back’ or ‘defending’ anything. It’s just not really our attitude,” Macdonald told reporters this week at the league meeting in Arizona.

“The goal is to try to retain as many great players as we can. And we love our roster. We love our guys. We are trying to keep that unit together, that continuity.

“That’s part of our long-term plans, too, how we’ve budgeted. ...That’s how we’ve done business.

“And I feel like we’ve executed that pretty well, for the most part."