In his preseason debut, Sam Howell "played pretty well," in head coach Mike Macdonald's words, playing most of the first three quarters and finishing the completing 16 of 27 attempts for 130 yards and one touchdown.

The quarterback led two scoring drives, one being a 13-yard touchdown pass to tight end Brady Russell in the second quarter, the other being a rushing touchdown by running back George Holani, also in the second quarter.

Howell and the Seahawks showed that they were able to keep the ball moving for most of the game, and more importantly converting on third downs, going 8 for 15 when Howell was playing, an area the Seahawks struggled with last year. One of those third-down plays was kept alive by Howell with a 14-yard run on a third-and-10 play.

"I think that's definitely something that I've always kind of done my whole career is, especially on third down, is I can try to make some plays with my feet," Howell said on running the ball. "I think that's just a part of my game. It's something that whenever I'm out there I'm going to try to use, especially on third down, especially when they're playing man coverage. When they're playing man coverage, there's a lot of room to run the ball for the quarterback. When we get man coverage, obviously trying to throw the ball first but I know there's good opportunities to run as well."

"I thought Sam played really well," head coach Mike Macdonald said. "Moving the offense, not all the starters played. I think we had a couple of the interior o-line guys in there. Great to see him come back out in the second half and move all the way down the field and then we want to close that drive out but, I thought we operated well, made some great decisions, slung it around. Sure, there were some plays that we'd want back and that's good. It's never going to be a perfect performance, but I'm definitely pleased."

Howell agreed with Macdonald, "I thought there was [drives] that we could have done a little better job. Obviously, I have to go look back at the film, but I thought there were some things that we might have left out there but you're not going to be perfect, and we moved the ball well, controlled the game, I don't know what exactly the time possession was, but I know we had it for most of the game. We played some good complimentary football."

And while this was only the first preseason game ahead of a long season, Howell saw some things he liked from the offense like their ball running and offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb's play calling.

"We were running the ball really well," Howell said. "I was fine with the decision to run the ball there on the fourth down. We definitely have to find a way to finish that, but play call wise, I thought it was pretty good."

Macdonald called this matchup against the Chargers a "foundational first game."

"It's something we want to build on. There will be plenty of details on tape that we're doing to dive into and I can't wait to watch the tape and see how the guys did."