Different Feel This Year

by: Michael Steffes

There has to be, right? Today marked the start of the final post-draft mini camp for Coach Mike Holmgren. At least with the Seahawks. It is also the first one in seven years without the smiling face of Shaun Alexander to lighten things up.

Not too many surprises so far. Most of the players that are recovering from surgery did not participate. That left veteran Chris Gray as the first team starting center and newly signed Chop Womack as the starting left tackle.

Lost of new faces filled out the offensive personnel. Mike Wahle was running as the left guard, with Sims at right as expected. Julius Jones and TJ Duckett lined up behind them. Although, Mo Morris was the first team back, according to Frank Hughes.

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The only player not at practice was Rocky Bernard. Rocky is not recovering from the groin issue as I speculated this morning, but actually a surgery he had on his toe. My guess is that he did not attend to avoid any negative attention to the team today, instead allowing Holmgren to address the issue. He did, but saying..."Let it run its course, and when it's all done, people will go, 'Oh.' " It remains to be seen if he will be in attendance later in the week.

Because of the absence of both Bernard and Tubbs the D-Line had some interesting shuffling. The new guys like Tripplett and Cooper actually ran as the third team with Cooper at end. One thing that was of note was that Tripplett ran as a right tackle, which is usually the anchor not the penetrator(3-tech). Red Bryant ran as the 2nd team 3 technique behind Craig Terrill. That might be a glimpse as to what the team thinks about him. He is known to be fairly athletic for his size. Also Barka Atkins lined up as the first team LDE, filling in for Kerney. This is a good indication that the team is viewing him more favorably than Jason Babin who was the 2nd team LDE. Not good news for Babin, although there is a lot of time to change things.

All and all, my guess is that people are just happy to be back to playing football. Well, all those who aren't injured. They will spend the week in rehabbing and watching. Just because more info has come to light, I have updated the injury chart and will continue to do so as warranted. Here it is....


Info was taken from this report from the Seattle Times and Seattle PI.