AJ Barner Camp Update — August 31: Cut Day Didn't Settle the Split
2026 NFL Season · Monday, Aug 31
Barner made the roster, per Seahawks Wire, in a tight end core Bob Condotta describes as set since the first day of camp, while Elijah Arroyo again produced the room's noise — two catches for fifty yards and a touchdown in Nashville. Barner has no snaps logged in either preseason game, and the split between the two is still unresolved.
When AJ Barner's week moves the numbers, you'll know — every episode, in one weekly email.
The full episode, in writing
Cut day held no suspense in Seattle's tight end room. AJ Barner made the initial 53 among four tight ends — Elijah Arroyo, Barner, Nick Kallerup, Eric Saubert, per Kole Musgrove at Seahawks Wire — and Bob Condotta at The Seattle Times wrote that the top three there have been "set since the first day of camp." What the week did keep doing is giving the tight end reporting to the other man in the room. Arroyo, who had scored in the Nashville joint practice on Friday the 20-first, per Ari Horton and John Boyle at the team's website, caught two passes for 50 yards and a touchdown in the game itself two days later, per Cameron Van Til at Seattle Sports. Barner appears in neither game's account.
The only ordering evidence the week produced points the other way: Athlon's post-cut depth chart lists Barner ahead of Arroyo, per Bryce Lazenby. That's one projection outlet's read, not a beat report, and it doesn't settle a snap split. So the honest state of the room is two signals in tension — Arroyo's on-field production pulling one direction, a published depth chart pulling the other — and no live data on how they share a field, because they haven't shared one in a game this preseason.
Our August 20-third episode watched for exactly that split, plus any first game usage for Barner. The usage never came, and the split goes to the season unsorted. Back in June the preview's bet was the catches — 52 of them last year, second-most on the Super Bowl champions behind only Jaxon Smith-Njigba — with the split as the thing that sizes them, and the two offseason surgeries have still produced no reported setback in any window, this one included. The first real snap counts will say more than August ever did. We'll be watching when they land.
_Data via nflverse._
Keep going