Seahawks looking for healthy bodies

Published 11:22 pm Monday, September 15, 2008

RENTON — At a time of year when the Seattle Seahawks expected to be getting players back, they just keep losing them.

On Monday, one day after the Seahawks fell to 0-2 by way of a 33-30 loss to San Francisco in their home opener, Seattle’s front office gathered in a room and went through the all-too-familiar routine of figuring out how to fill out a roster.

This week’s needs are a wide receiver — again — and another quarterback.

Receiver Logan Payne, who injured himself Sunday on the first reception of his first NFL start, will be placed on injured reserve with a season-ending knee injury. That leaves Seattle with just three healthy receivers: Courtney Taylor, Michael Bumpus and Billy McMullen.

Backup quarterback Seneca Wallace, who was supposed to play receiver in Sunday’s game but got hurt in warmups, is likely to miss “three to four weeks,” coach Mike Holmgren said, with a strained calf.

In other words, today should be another busy Tuesday when it comes to roster moves.

“It’s the way it is right now,” linebacker Julian Peterson said. “Some teams might have one or two injuries in a year, and for other teams it comes in bunches. Right now, we’re going through bunches.”

The list of available receivers, Holmgren said, is similar to the one the Seahawks looked at this time last week, when the team was trying to replace injured starter Nate Burleson. Holmgren acknowledged that there was a chance Samie Parker could be brought back, said that Jordan Kent could be moved up from the practice squad and answered the inevitable Koren Robinson questions by saying he would be open to anything.

Anyone with bus fare and a dream of playing professional football might want to swing by the team’s practice facility to offer his hands.

“Believe me, we’ll explore every option we can,” Holmgren said, “because desperate times call for desperate measures.”

The Seahawks’ two projected starters — Deion Branch and Bobby Engram — could be back in the next couple weeks, but aren’t likely to play in Sunday’s game against the St. Louis Rams.

Receiver is not the only position that’s been hit by injuries. The team is down two starting offensive linemen and played Sunday’s game with three ailing starters on defense. Cornerback Marcus Trufant had a club on his broken left hand, middle linebacker Lofa Tatupu wore a cast to protect an injured right thumb, and cornerback Kelly Jennings finished the game playing with a broken rib.

At least they got to play in the game. Wallace hurt his calf during pre-game warmups, ending his afternoon before it started. He was on crutches — a familiar sight in the Seahawks’ locker room this season — and did not hide his disappointment.

“Maybe the correct thing to say is that I wasn’t ready to play receiver,” Wallace said when asked how the injury happened.

While Wallace is sidelined, third-year player Charlie Frye will step into the role of No. 2 quarterback behind Matt Hasselbeck. Frye said that his extensive preseason action helped prepare him for the role.

“It was very valuable,” said Frye, who started three preseason games and played the entire way in one of them. “Just the experience, and the reps I got in practice and games, that was very valuable.”

The litany of injuries, and the team’s 0-2 start, have made for a unique season thus far. The Seahawks haven’t started a season with two losses since 2002, and they probably have never had this many wide receivers go down.

But at least two veterans have seen situations like this before.

Linebacker Julian Peterson compared it to his 2003 season with the San Francisco 49ers, when injuries turned a playoff team into a 7-9 pretender. The 49ers fell to 2-14 the following year, and 4-12 in Peterson’s final year there.

But he said that this year’s Seahawks are in a much better position than the past San Francisco teams.

“We’ve still got a lot of good core guys who are healthy,” Peterson said. “When I was going through my thing in San Francisco, a lot of our core guys went down. When that happens, it really goes downhill.”

Running back T.J. Duckett agreed that the Seahawks were in a better position than most injury-plagued teams. His example was a 2003 Atlanta Falcons team that lost quarterback Michael Vick and running back Warrick Dunn to injuries en route to a 5-11 record.

“We’re more of a veteran team here,” Duckett said. “A lot of it comes down to guys having to step up.

“Being in that situation (in Atlanta), it was a bunch of young guys who got replaced by more young guys — that’s tough. But this is more of a veteran team. We’ve got guys who are capable of picking up the slack.”

This year’s Seahawks might have plenty of veterans, but they’ve also got some work to do.

The big question is whether they have enough bodies to get it done.

“We lost some guys, but we do get some guys back,” Holmgren said. “… That in itself doesn’t guarantee anything, but at least we’ll have some of our guys back.”