Could Seahawks TE Jimmy Graham not be ready by the opener?

Published 1:04 pm Wednesday, August 17, 2016

On Wednesday the Seahawks held their walkthrough in advance of their home preseason game against the Minnesota Vikings on Thursday night. It’s a short week for the Seahawks, with just five days between Saturday’s preseason-opening 17-16 victory over Kansas City and Thursday’s game, so dealing with that will be one of Seattle’s challenges. Seattle coach Pete Carroll said the starters will play “quite a bit more” against Minnesota than again Kansas City — quarterback Russell Wilson played just one series against the Chiefs, the starting defense played two series, and the first-team offensive line played three series.

Here’s Carroll giving the updates on who’s playing and who isn’t Thursday:

Seahawks coach Pete Carroll 8/17/16 from Everett Herald on Vimeo.

To sum up, running back C.J. Prosise (hamstring), tackle J’Marcus Webb (knee), strong safety Kam Chancellor (groin) and defensive tackle Jordan Hill (groin) are out. They’ll join tight end Jimmy Graham (knee) and running back Thomas Rawls (ankle) on the sidelines.

Regarding Graham, who’s coming off a torn patellar tendon in his knee that ended his 2015, he was taken off the physically-unable-to-perform list last week and returned to practice on a limited basis. However, Carroll hinted Wednesday that it’s possible Graham may not be ready by the Sept. 11 start of the regular season:

“We’re shooting for where is he at the start of the season. We’ll evaluate then to how much longer it may take, or he may be ready, we don’t know that yet. But he feels good. He’s confident that it’s going along well. He’s got some tests coming up going into next week that will give us some more information, and we’ll just see how it’s going. We’re pleased, and he’s upbeat about it and confident and he’s working very hard to make sure he takes full advantage of the rehab time as well as the football time, so he’s making good progress.”

Meanwhile, just re-signed defensive tackle Tony McDaniel will play, as will linebacker Mike Morgan, who saw a specialist in Philadelphia about a groin issue earlier this week. Receiver Kasen Williams (hamstring) and running back Zac Brooks (hamstring) will see their first action of the preseason.

Wilson also spoke to the media Wednesday, and he was very high on Seattle’s talent level this season:

“We’ve had great teams before, and I can honestly say this is the most competitive and talented team I think we’ve had, across the board.”

Carroll echoed that sentiment, comparing this team to the 2013 team that went on to win the Super Bowl:

“It feels like that again, it feels like there’s a lot of guys who can play, we can be comfortable with different guys moving in and out of the lineup, which means we have a very competitive roster. I don’t disagree with [Wilson]. We feel we have a lot of guys at the receiver spot, a lot of running backs, a lot of corners, we’re going to have a rotation at the D line that we like, those are all really good signs. The tight end position I think is going to be better than it’s been. So those are all positives.”

Carroll and the players have talked about how this preseason feels different than the previous two, without the weight of having just won or lost the Super Bowl, and that therefore the energy and hunger are better. So there’s much optimism in the Seahawks’ ranks.

One last note today concerning Archbishop Murphy High School graduate Taniela Tupou. Tupou had been brought in to convert to fullback, but he’s been back on the defensive line ever since suffering a broken knuckle early in training camp. Carroll talked about Tupou when asked about the fullback situation:

“Unfortunately for Tani Tupou, he wasn’t able to really show because he has his hand in a cast, pretty difficult there. He looked good, though. He did some nice things and looked very physical at the spot, but we just couldn’t continue the evaluation until really he gets his hand out of the cast.”