INDIANAPOLIS — As the Seahawks work over the next few weeks to keep as many of their potential free agents as they can, one thing general manager John Schneider said won’t be a factor is the pending sale of the team.
Speaking to reporters at the NFL scouting combine Tuesday, Schneider reiterated what coach Mike Macdonald said last week — that nothing will change with the day-to-day operation of the team while the sale is being completed.
“It’s just business as usual for us,” Schneider said, “… just business as usual and all football.”
Schneider said he got that message from team chair Jody Allen when the two recently spoke after it was revealed that the team is being put up for sale.
“She’s like, ‘Let’s get it, let’s go for it,’” he said. “Like: ‘Let’s rip it.’”
Schneider answered a simple “no” when asked if the pending sale would change anything about how the team approaches free agency and the offseason.
He also said he’s been given “no indication” about potential owners or a timeline for a sale.
Schneider said that at some point it will be his job to learn “what’s shaking” in terms of the sale and relay that to others on the football side of the organization, acting as a liaison between the two.
As of yet there appears to be no new news on that front with no substantive reports surfacing about potential new owners.
Schneider said he did have one sale-related item on his to-do list this week, saying he planned to talk to Denver general manager George Paton.
Paton has been Denver’s general manager since 2021 and handled the football end of things for the Broncos during the time that the team was sold to Walmart heir Rob Walton in 2022.
“He went through it so I’m going to need advice on it,” Schneider said of Paton. “I don’t know what’s going to happen or what’s coming.”
New OC Fleury is “all football’’
While the Seahawks have yet to announce their full coaching staff for the 2026 season it appears that there are no more additions or subtractions coming.
The Seahawks are still finalizing the exact roles and titles for some of their coaches before making the composition of the staff for 2026 public.
The biggest addition is new offensive coordinator Brian Fleury, who spent the last seven years with the 49ers before being hired last week to replace Klint Kubiak, who left to become the new head coach of the Las Vegas Raiders.
Fleury was a somewhat surprise choice because he has no NFL play-calling experience, though he was the run game coordinator for the 49ers last season, and it had been thought the Seahawks might stay in-house.
Fleury was impressive enough during his interviews with the Seahawks to get the job.
“Big brain, adaptable, knows exactly what he wants,” Schneider said of Fleury. “Felt like he knew what he was looking for, what he was looking at, you know, when he was talking about our team and where we are offensively.”
Schneider pointed to Fleury’s background, which included three years as defensive coordinator at Sacred Heart University from 2006-08, as well as his family.
Fleury’s stepfather, Terry Changuris, was a longtime coach at Seneca Valley High in Germantown, Md., leading the team to seven state titles — including one in which Fleury was the quarterback in 1997.
“He’s got this really cool defensive background,” Schneider said. “He called defenses in college at Sacred Heart, I think, when he was, like, 25 or 26 years old. His dad was like a seven-time state champion in Maryland. He’s just all football.”
Schneider will need to get caught up on draft
The quick turnaround from the Super Bowl to the combine and the rest of the offseason means some in the organization will have to do some quick work to get caught up on everything.
That includes Schneider, who acknowledged that he’s at a little different spot in his preparation for the draft — which his set for April 23-25 — than he might usually be.
“Yeah, I’ve got to get caught up,” he said. Schneider said others on the team’s staff have done their usual pre-draft prep, so overall all the usual info has been compiled.
“It’s really going to be about my private time, the studying and getting caught up with that,” he said. “… It’s like the discipline on the weekends to try to figure out how to get caught up and we’ll get to it.”
Schneider said the team is right where it needs to be in terms of preparation for the free agent signing period next month, saying, “We had great free agency meetings during the season.”
