The Seattle Seahawks announced Monday that safety Nick Emmanwori has been placed on the physically unable to perform list, four days before veterans report to training camp. The team did not say what is keeping him off the field, and as Myles Simmons of Pro Football Talk noted in reporting the move, Emmanwori was a participant in Seattle’s offseason program this spring.
The designation is not necessarily alarming on its own. At this stage of the calendar, a player on PUP can be activated the moment he passes a physical, and teams routinely park players there as a precaution while they work through summer soreness. The list becomes a real problem only if it follows a player to the initial 53-man roster, which would cost him at least the first four games. Seattle is nowhere near that decision point.
Still, the timing stings for a defense built from the back end forward. Emmanwori was one of the league’s best rookies in 2025, finishing with 81 tackles, nine tackles for loss, 2.5 sacks, 11 passes defensed and an interception in 14 regular-season games, then adding 13 tackles and four passes defensed in three playoff wins on the way to the Super Bowl LX title. Last week, ESPN’s annual survey of executives, coaches and scouts voted him the NFL’s No. 6 safety entering his second season. Every rep he misses in camp is a rep the champions’ secondary spends working around its most disruptive young piece.
Emmanwori was not alone in Monday’s announcement. Running back Kenny McIntosh and Tyrone Broden also went on the PUP list, both still recovering from injuries suffered during the 2025 season, and rookie defensive tackle Deven Eastern was placed on the list late last week.
Veterans report Friday, and Seattle opens nine public practices Saturday with an HBO Hard Knocks crew in the building all summer. The first meaningful update on Emmanwori will be simple to spot: either he is on the field when practice begins, or the question of what put him on the list starts demanding an answer.
