RENTON — Following Sunday’s game against the Dallas Cowboys, Seattle head coach Pete Carroll said the Seahawks feared cornerback Byron Maxwell, who left the game with an injury in the second quarter, might have a high ankle sprain, an injury that can sideline a player for several weeks.
The diagnosis Monday was much better. Maxwell has a calf strain, not an ankle sprain.
“It took us a while to figure that out,” Carroll said, “so that shouldn’t be nearly as long as one of the kinds of sprains it could have been.”
Maxwell hasn’t been ruled out for this week’s game at St. Louis.
“I don’t know that,” Carroll said when asked if Maxwell could play Sunday. “We’ll have to wait and see when we get back the next couple of days.”
Simon to practice
The good news for Seattle and its thin secondary is that cornerback Tharold Simon, who is recovering from knee surgery, will practice this week, and possibly could play Sunday.
“Tharold will practice this week,” Carroll said. “It’s coming at an excellent time. We’ll see how he does. He’ll have to survive the week and all of that. He got out last week for a couple of days, so that helps him get started this week. All along we’ve really been looking forward to Tharold’s ability to contribute, so this will be his chance. We’ll see where that fits this week. I really can’t tell you how it’s going to go. We’ll have to wait until we get through Friday’s practice to know where we are with that.”
Cornerback Jeremy Lane (groin) is improving and is expected to return to practice next week, but because he is on short-term injured reserve, he isn’t eligible for game action until the Nov. 9 game against the New York Giants.
Carroll didn’t rule out the possibility of looking to add cornerbacks to the roster.
“We’re always looking to see what we need to do to support our situation,” Carroll said. “The fact that Tharold is coming back and Jeremy Lane will be out practicing starting next week, we’re going to get a boost coming back from those guys. It would be fantastic if Tharold can contribute this week and Jeremy’s back the next.”
And speaking of Seattle’s banged-up secondary, safety Kam Chancellor made it through the game OK after sitting out practice last week with a hip injury. Carroll said he’s expecting Chancellor to practice this week.
“I think he will,” Carroll said. “Judging from what I heard from him coming out of the game, he should be able to go this week. He didn’t practice a snap last week.”
Okung is “fine”
Left tackle Russell Okung briefly left Seattle’s Week 3 win over Denver with a shoulder injury, but missed only one series in that game, and has played in both of Seattle’s games since then. On Monday, however, Q13 Fox reported that Okung is playing with a torn labrum in his shoulder.
Asked about Okung’s health Carroll said, “Russell sprained his shoulder in a game a few weeks ago and returned to that game, and hasn’t missed a practice yet, so he’s been fine.”
And when a follow-up was asked specifically about the report of a torn labrum, Carroll said, “When you sprain your shoulder, your labrum’s involved and there’s some stretching and stuff in there. I don’t know how far that went, but he came right back from it. He’s had full strength and support and all of that. He’s OK.”
Other injuries
The status of center Max Unger, who missed Sunday’s game with a foot injury, will likely be a question mark through the week, Carroll said.
“We’ll keep taking Max a day at a time, see how he’s going,” he said. “Steve Schilling stepped in and did a nice job, filled in well, but we’d love to get Max back. That will go all the way to the end of the week I’m sure.”
Tight end Zach Miller, who has missed two games since having ankle surgery, is still rehabbing and won’t be back to practice this week, Carroll said. Carroll also briefly mentioned a possible shoulder injury for cornerback Richard Sherman after the game, but said Monday that Sherman is fine.
Where’s the Beast?
Seahawks running back Marshawn Lynch carried just 10 times in Sunday’s loss, and only had two first half carries, something Carroll admitted isn’t acceptable for his team.
“We don’t ever want to play a game when Marshawn carries the ball ten times,” Carroll said. “That’s not enough. That’s not a format that we’re trying to build from.”
So what happened?
“We tried to unfold the plan, to do what we normally do and to kind of get the rhythm of it and to get the proportion of the run to the pass,” Carroll said. “But it just didn’t quite fit right and didn’t happen the way we wanted it to. A couple mistakes like getting behind the sticks and things like that affected it. We tried to get back to it in the third quarter and it just seemed like we never really caught up with how we like to manage the game. We don’t feel very good about that. We want to get that done every time we go out.”
Hawks-Panthers goes to CBS
The key NFC matchup between the Seahawks and Panthers will air on CBS as part of the NFL’s new “cross-flexing.”
The league said Monday that the Oct. 26 game at Carolina will be on CBS instead of Fox, which owns the NFC package. The policy change in the current TV rights agreement aims to gain bigger audiences for appealing games. CBS owns the AFC package.
The Panthers and defending Super Bowl champion Seattle are both 3-2 going into this weekend’s games.
The Associated Press contributed to this report
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