T-Minus 4 hours: Does Hill get Tagged?

by: Chris Sullivan

The big question of the day is clearly will the Seahawks tag Leroy Hill as a franchise or transition player? Doing so would instantly eat up the bulk of our apparent cap room, but there is a lot of time to create more space and that will certainly happen in the coming days and weeks. Sando believes that the Hawks will tag Hill and, to be honest, he is probably right. Its a low risk proposition to tag a great player, especially entering a year of free agency that seems uncharacteristically open.

Beyond Hill, there is not likely to be a solid linebacker that the Hawks would pick up in free agency -- just about everyone below Hill in the free agent rankings has one or two serious questions backing them up (but then, Hill may have a few of his own). If the Hawks did decide to part with Hill or, at least, let him test the FA waters, I wouldn't mind them going after Michael Boley of Atlanta who was as recently as 2007 touted as one of the major up-and-comers in the league. Boley was benched in 2008. He still has a lot of potential, and could potentially be a third-linebacker star in the same way that Hill has been a third-linebacker star. Won't make the Pro-Bowl but the team's fans will all complain that he should have. Just a thought.

Anyway, I don't have a good read on whether the Hawks will tag Hill today or not. It's the obvious thing to do, and it's unlikely that Ruskell will want to let one of his big draft success stories go... but I have this gut feeling that it's not a lock. What do you guys think? The decision must be made by 1pm PST, though we may not hear about for some time after that...