- Several Seattle Seahawks players, including undrafted free agents, arrive at the team facility before 6 a.m.
- Linebackers Pat O’Connell and Drake Thomas, along with safety Ty Okada, formed an early morning ‘breakfast club.’
- Quarterback Sam Darnold and receiver Cooper Kupp often joke with the trio about who arrives at the facility first.
SAN JOSE, CA – First in the building, last to leave. It’s an aged cliché, and certainly one any NFL team and its fans want to accurately describe their quarterback.
But while Sam Darnold has been instrumental in leading the Seattle Seahawks to Super Bowl 60, it doesn’t apply to him. Nor is it true of one of his top receivers, Super Bowl 56 MVP Cooper Kupp – a renowned, early morning football film junkie who was constantly in the facility at daybreak with Matthew Stafford when they were Los Angeles Rams teammates, a habit Kupp carried over with Darnold this season.
But in Seattle – or, more specifically, at the Seahawks’ suburban training headquarters in Renton, Washington – Darnold and Kupp, dedicated as they are to their craft and successful as they’ve been over the course of the 2025 season, are routinely battling to be the fourth and fifth players into the picturesque Virginia Mason Athletic Center on the shores of Lake Washington. Darnold revealed the reason why during the buildup to the Super Bowl showdown with the New England Patriots.
“When I show up at the facility,” Darnold said Feb. 4, “me and Cooper are always kinda the first ones to get there – besides Ty Okada and Pat O’Connell.
“They’re there at 5:30, and then they sit down and have breakfast for 45 minutes – so, never really understood that.”
Who, you ask? And what’s to understand?
Ty Okada, Pat O’Connell, Drake Thomas form Seahawks’ ‘breakfast club’
O’Connell, a linebacker, and Okada, a safety, are undrafted free agents finishing up their third seasons in Seattle. Neither played much during their first two years in the NFL, each cut at the end of training camp in both 2023 and 2024 before being re-signed to the practice squad and subsequently shuttling back and forth between it and the active roster.
But Okada started 11 games this season and was also a significant special teams contributor. O’Connell only had 56 defensive snaps but nearly three times that many on special teams during his nine appearances this season.
But they enjoy daily collective appearances before sunrise at VMAC, where breakfast is served at 6 a.m. And O’Connell immediately wanted it known that Darnold wasn’t accurate. Totally.
“It’s only like 30 minutes, he exaggerated a little bit,” O’Connell told USA TODAY Sports. “We’re just there talking ball and catching up, talking life and everything. We call it our little breakfast club. It’s just three guys hanging out, talking shop.”
And it is a trio. O’Connell was quick to note that Darnold omitted starting linebacker Drake Thomas, yet another undrafted free agent who joined the team in 2023 − claimed by the Seahawks that year after he was waived by the Las Vegas Raiders during the post-camp roster reduction.
So what exactly are they discussing hours before the sun comes up in Renton’s northern latitude?
“Anything imaginable under the sun,” Okada told USA TODAY Sports.
“I would love to say it’s a little bit more football than social, but I would say it’s probably the opposite way, right? We love to talk shop about everything going on. … Really, it’s just a great time for us to connect in the morning before our busy days start.
“(J)ust really grateful for that group and being able to experience it all together with them.”
And if it sounds a bit like the high school cafeteria before homeroom?
“One hundred percent, that’s really what it is,” Thomas told USA TODAY Sports. “Just chopping it up, eating breakfast, talking about life.”
Family, weddings and football
And life is coming at them fast. O’Connell has a young family, while Thomas and Okada are both getting married later this year.
“We talk a lot about weddings,” Thomas admitted.
But don’t misinterpret this as an unserious troika. Their day jobs are often the topic du jour, especially, says Okada, given it’s helpful for him to compare notes with linebackers and vice versa.
“We just talk about whatever’s going on in the building, wherever we’re at in the week. We still talk a lot of football,” said Thomas.
And while they may not be the biggest names heading into Super Sunday, don’t discount the possibility one of them winds up making a pivotal play. Thomas and Okada combined for more than 160 tackles during the regular season. Thomas’ fourth-quarter interception in Week 18 at Levi’s Stadium – where he’ll be playing again Sunday – on a pass from San Francisco 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy that was bobbled near the goal line by superstar Christian McCaffrey before settling into the linebacker’s hands helped Seattle secure the No. 1 playoff seed that’s been so critical to the Seahawks’ Super Bowl run.
Thomas was ready for that moment and might well be for his next opportunity thanks to those early morning talks about life and football. After all, the “breakfast club” existed in Seattle two years before Darnold and Kupp arrived last spring – even if it’s also a source of fun now.
“Sometimes they’ll beat us, sometimes we’ll beat them – we razz each other a little bit,” Okada said of Darnold and Kupp. “It’s just funny to (tell them), ‘You’re late.’”
But Kupp had the last word, and maybe unsurprisingly took the side of his quarterback rather than his defensive teammates (who, for the record, all live near Bellevue, about 15 minutes from Seahawks HQ).
“Oh, their little club,” Kupp burst out laughing on his way to a mid-morning meeting Thursday when asked by USA TODAY Sports about the fellas who are a perpetual presence when they’re in Washington.
“So what they don’t tell you is that they actually don’t have houses. They actually just live at the facility – they just throw mats down on the locker room floor, I mean they just use other guys’ lockers for their clothes. It’s really cheating what they’re doing. They set an alarm – it’s like they’re in their own kitchen. It’s not the same.
“They’re cheaters.”
But cheaters Darnold and Kupp are happy to work with. Whenever they punch in.