RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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See the full story · 1 sourcesFrom fall through winter, spring into summer, the Mystery of Tory Horton endured.
What was the unspecified shin injury that ended Horton’s 2025 rookie season after his massive Seahawks splash of six touchdowns in his first NFL games? Why did the team win the Super Bowl in February without him?
Coach Mike Macdonald remained vague on why the team’s speedy wide receiver and kick returner was out for the rest of last season. The coach remained nonspecific about Horton as he missed spring organized team activities. Then Horton missed Seattle’s minicamp in June.
He appeared to be a candidate to join star safety Nick Emmanwori on the physically-unable-to-perform list to begin training camp.
Then, this first week of training camp: Viola!
Horton’s back, zooming across the practices fields of the Virginia Mason Athletic Center. He’s catching punts. He’s running deep pass routes on sprints stretching the Seahawks’ defense. He’s catching passes from quarterbacks Sam Darnold and Drew Lock.
Friday, Horton was back with cornerback Noah Igbinoghene in special-teams coach Jay Harbaugh’s two-deep alignment of kickoff returners.
What happened to Horton?
“It was weird,” he said Friday following the sixth practice of training camp, the fifth one he fully participated in. “About week three (of the 2025 season), I started feeling my shin, and worked through it through a couple games.”
In week three Horton had three catches of Sam Darnold’s passes for 32 yards and a touchdown. He also returned a punt untouched 95 yards for a touchdown to set a team record plus spark the Seahawks’ runaway first half and 44-13 rout of the New Orleans Saints Sept 21.
It was the first of his two two-score games — while playing with what turned out to be a major shin injury. His second one was his two-touchdown extravaganza to lead Seattle’s blowout win at Washington on a Sunday night, Nov. 2. That was in week eight.
That remains the last game he’s played.
“Got to week nine, got it checked up and found out there was a crack (in his shin),” Horton said Friday. “Ended up getting surgery on it. And that was that. Something that you work through until you can’t.
“It’s not something that I wish happened, but it did and we got the issue solved. And the leg isn’t going anywhere now.
“I feel good.”
The right leg isn’t going anywhere because Horton now has two rods surgically implanted in it. The other one was from the major right knee and leg injury he got in the fall of 2024. That ended his college career at Colorado State.
Seattle drafted him the following spring , in the fifth round. Most NFL scouts believe Horton would have gone much earlier in the 2025 draft if not for that injury and surgery.
Wait. Go back: Horton played five games with a crack in his shin last rookie season? And scored four touchdowns in those five games while compromised?
“Yeah. It didn’t feel as bad as it got until after the Washington game,” he said. “Those couple weeks before, building up, there was always a little something there that I felt and over the weeks it got worse. I finally took the time to get it checked out and that’s when we found out.”
Tory Horton’s and Rashid Shaheed’s speed
Horton said he felt during his absence last season he “let the team down.”
Fortunately for the Seahawks, general manager John Schneider finally pried another speedy wide receiver and kick returner from the Saints, one he’d been pursuing for months and perhaps a year. The same week the Seahawks learned Horton had a cracked shin, Schneider traded to get Rashid Shaheed from New Orleans.
“I felt like I let the team down a bit, not being able to go back out there as much as I wanted,” Horton said. “There were times I still tried to go out there and run some routes and the trainers had to tell me to take it easy.
“Dealing with a bone thing, you have to let that heal. There’s no playing through that once you get to a certain point. I did the most I could and made it to however far I got...
“I feel like we made the smart move of holding out and seeing if it heals on its own, and the time got away from us.”
He had the surgery in February, after he was part of the Seahawks’ Super Bowl victory parade through downtown Seattle.
Now Horton is back. Almost all the way back.
He practiced the first two days of training camp last weekend, doing position drills but not any 11-on-11 scrimmaging. The team’s medical and training staff had him take the Monday practice off.
Then Tuesday, Horton was full go, including in 11-on-11 scrimmaging. After a players’ day off from practice Wednesday, Horton again practiced and scrimmaged fully in the first two padded practices of camp Thursday and Friday.
Friday, he zoomed across and up the field to catch passes from Darnold, running away from defensive backs.
After a pacing day off Monday, Tory Horton full go for the third consecutive practice in #Seahawks training camp. @thenewstribune pic.twitter.com/WF9a4UMDnr
— Gregg Bell (@gbellseattle) July 31, 2026 He is showing the speed coach Mike Macdonald and new offensive coordinator Brian Fleury are excited and curious to unleash during the regular season: Horton and Shaheed both in the same formations challenging the deep coverage of defenses.
In theory, Horton and Shaheed running deep on the same play should open the rest of the field for NFL offensive player of the year Jaxon Smith-Njigba, two-time Super Bowl champion Cooper Kupp and emerging tight-end star AJ Barner underneath them.
For now, Macdonald is preaching some caution about Horton’s return from the injury that remained mysterious for so long.
“We’re managing him right now,” Macdonald said.
“Think of it as a ramp. Give them more exposure until their body’s ready to go 100%. That’s the plan right now.
“But everything’s going to plan.”
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