S.I.’s Albert Breer: Why the Seahawks are Well-Poised for a Super Bowl Return

Albert Breer has already worked Seattle, Arizona, San Francisco and Los Angeles on this training camp trip, and the hardest logistical problem he faces on the road is finding a laundromat. The easiest question is which roster looks like a champion.

"It's obvious why they won the Super Bowl," Breer said of the Seahawks. "It's just the depth and you can see the size."

Breer told Rich that Seattle is one of those camps where you feel a team before you can chart it, and he reached for the best rosters John Harbaugh had in Baltimore as the comparison. Big, tough, physical, rugged, smart. Seattle lost Boye Mafe to a $20 million a year deal in Cincinnati and still lines up Darrell Jackson, Uchenna Nwosu, Demarcus Lawrence and Dante Fowler on the edge. They kept Rashid Shaheed. They still have Jaxon Smith-Njigba and Cooper Kupp. Corner needs sorting and Coby Bryant is gone at safety, and that is about the length of the list.

"There just aren't a ton of questions," Breer said. "I don't think last year was any fluke."

Dallas earned a different kind of endorsement. Breer got 10 minutes with Dak Prescott and called it maybe the most efficient conversation he has ever had. Prescott wore a Super Bowl 30 shirt to camp, the last title the Cowboys won, which Breer pointed out is now half the Super Bowl era ago with the league sitting at 60. Prescott's reasoning on saying the goal out loud was simple. It is obvious, everybody is going to talk about Dallas in September and October and November whether they are winning or losing, so start the conversation now.

Brian Schottenheimer's stated ambition to build the best culture in sports sounds hokey until you run the last 12 months of acquisitions. Kenny Clark. Quinnen Williams. The trade for Rashan Gary. Caleb Downs. "They're serious about it," Breer said. His caveat is depth. He does not think Dallas has what Seattle has if health turns.

Which brings us to the show's newest segment, Is He Back Yet, born yesterday and existing entirely because of Aaron Donald. Breer believes Donald wants to play, and that the standard is the obstacle.

"What he's doing and what he's been doing is trying to figure out, can I be myself," Breer said. The trouble is that the bar for Donald feeling like Donald is higher than it is for just about any player at his position in NFL history.

This is not a man who spent two years lamenting retirement, per Breer's reporting. It is a man weighing an unbelievable opportunity against the price of the process. His closest comparison was Eric Weddle, who told him the comeback was 100 percent worth it and who still feels the torn pec and the hamstring five years later.

On San Francisco, Breer said Kyle Shanahan's body is healing but the concussion is coming slower. At the practice Breer attended, Shanahan stood back with John Lynch and observed. "He almost looked like a personnel man would at practice." The infrastructure around him is strong, but Breer pushed back hard on the idea that the Niners would not miss him. No other coach in the league has his hands on every lever of the operation the way Shanahan does.

Tampa Bay and Baker Mayfield ran out of runway because the timelines never matched. Breer thinks Mayfield's June comments were meant to accelerate a front office that habitually finishes these deals in camp, the way it did with Tristan Wirfs, Luke Goedeke and Zyon McCollum. The number was in the range of $55 million per year, roughly what two franchise tags would average out to anyway.

Mayfield, for his part, has moved on. "If you've waited this long to take care of your franchise quarterback, that's too bad because it's only going to get worse from here," he said. "Yeah, I'm going to have a really good year."