The Seattle Seahawks begin their 2026 preseason on Saturday against the Dallas Cowboys, their only home appearance of their three-game preseason slate.
Not that there was much reason to suspect otherwise, but Seahawks head coach Mike Macdonald confirmed following Friday’s practice that Saturday’s game will be light on starters on offense and defense. However, one big change from last season is the rotation of quarterbacks Drew Lock and Jalen Milroe.
“George [Holani] should get some work tomorrow,” Macdonald said. “A lot of our established starters won’t be playing [against the Cowboys]. They’ll be going through the warm-up and everything, but George should see some action to some degree.”
“The quarterbacks, we’re going to rotate in some form or fashion,” Macdonald continued. “We have an idea of how we want it to work, but don’t want to be put in a corner there. It’ll be great. Both guys will get experience playing with different units.
“Normally the quarterback goes until he doesn’t go and then the next guy goes and closes the game out. With this game, I think we’re going to rotate to some extent.”
Macdonald revealed that, at least for the Cowboys game, Drew Lock will get the start before Jalen Milroe comes in at some point.
When Milroe was a rookie, he played just about exclusively with the third-team offense, including for a full-game start in the preseason finale versus the Green Bay Packers. Throughout training camp, Milroe has had scrimmage reps with the likes of A.J. Barner, Elijah Arroyo, and Jadarian Price, and by most accounts he’s made enough strides to practice with more established members of the Seahawks offense.
With all due respect to Drew Lock, if we aren’t going to see Sam Darnold much (if at all) over the next three weeks, almost all of preseason is going to be heavily focused on how much Milroe has developed as a quarterback. It should be interesting to watch!