Hour 4: Seahawks Defense Holds Players-Only Meeting

Brock Huard (0:00)

Give me a freaking auto.

SPEAKER_2 (0:01)

From the Quantum Fiber Studio, this is Brock and Salk on Seattle Sports.

SPEAKER_3 (0:07)

Brock Heward and Mark, Matt, Mark, sorry about, just Mike, Mike.

SPEAKER_4 (0:13)

Heward, not exactly Joe Capp there in the pocket.

SPEAKER_5 (0:16)

Now, here are your hosts, Brock Heward and Mike Salk.

Mike Salk (0:22)

All right, final hour of our Thursday show today. Tomorrow, G. Scott will come by, as he does, as he does.

Brock Huard (0:34)

Game day rolls tomorrow.

SPEAKER_5 (0:36)

Not quite.

Brock Huard (0:37)

I have a Hawkeye, so yes it is. Hawkeye's coming into town.

Mike Salk (0:41)

I'm sorry. Yes, you're right, true.

Game day rolls today.

Brock Huard (0:46)

If I was still over there at Fox, I'd be doing this game. This is my old crew. I was, RG3 in the house.

Mike Salk (0:51)

Re-listening to Peter Schrager yesterday, and he really had no idea what he was getting himself into when he brought up Thomas Rawls.

SPEAKER_4 (0:57)

No, he also had no idea.

Brock Huard (0:59)

Catching some shrapnel in the social realms.

Mike Salk (1:01)

Really?

Brock Huard (1:02)

For his comment about Brock Purdy, which I thought was totally benign.

Mike Salk (1:06)

Which one?

Brock Huard (1:06)

Of just saying, wow, he just does what Kyle wants him to do. And all these Niner fans coming out of the woodwork, like, you have not watched a snap. He creates, he improvises. And I don't think Peter was saying any of that. I think he was saying he's an extension of Kyle's brain on the field, which has made him so elite with all that continuity.

Mike Salk (1:25)

That's sort of what Grant Cohn was saying today, too. I mean, they both said very much the same thing. So, yeah, I don't, I don't know what, I mean, whatever, the social, whatever. And maybe that's why I shouldn't have reacted to this story at all, but I will.

Maura, this was started with your trash take yesterday on- No, not at all.

This is Stephen A yesterday being insulting when it comes to the Lane Johnson story. So yeah, the retirement. I should probably set it up by playing the original. It wasn't the original that really got me. It was his quote unquote apology deal that got me. But here you go. Here was the original, just so you sort of understand the background to this. I'll try not to subject you to too much, Stephen A. But hold on, let me let me play you. This was Maura's trash take from yesterday. I'm gonna set this up better. Here you go.

Stephen A. Smith (2:21)

And now the brother sat up there, one of the all-time greats of the Festival. What did he do, Shaq? What did he do, Jordan? He went like this, you know what? I'm gonna call it quits. Now he calls it quits. Not fourth season, not off season. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. After being subjected to this, he said life is a little bit too short. I need to focus. What did he say? His mental health?

Am I making it up?

SPEAKER_4 (2:45)

No, you're right. Did he say that?

Stephen A. Smith (2:46)

I'm not, I'm just kidding. So the brothers, four games in, to the 20, to the 2026 season, a dude that has been in the league forever sits back and says, I need to focus on my mental health and as an offensive tackle, Lord, you know it's bad.

Mike Salk (3:06)

All right, so it's really, it's a tough listen. I'm not joking. Like that is, that's a tough listen.

Brock Huard (3:11)

When you don't know the circumstances.

Mike Salk (3:13)

Well, yeah, and you're turning it into a punchline and you know, and then Stephen A, as we know, is at his own public battles of mental health as well. So it just, it rings really hollow and phony and just like, you're just turning it into a punchline, very unnecessarily, right? But okay, as I said yesterday, I have a little bit of grace for the Stephen A's of the world who have to say, have to give hot takes all day, every day that sometimes they're going to cross the line. And when they do, I think all I really ask is that they just say, hey, I blew it.

I went too far, that was dumb.

Brock Huard (3:47)

What is that term that I've talked about with college coaches? Just for some reason, I need to write this down and remember it. They don't really want to know the whole story.

Mike Salk (3:56)

A plausible deniability.