SEATTLE — It’s time to get an extended look.
Not just for the local football fans who have spent most of the past four weeks waiting to see the Seattle Seahawks in person, but also for the coaches who are eager to get a good feel for what the 2007 Seahawks will be like.
When the Seahawks host the Minnesota Vikings in tonight’s preseason home opener, many of the players on the field will look a lot more familiar than the ones who got the majority of playing time in San Diego and Green Bay. Starters like quarterback Matt Hasselbeck, running back Shaun Alexander and wide receiver Deion Branch should get most of the snaps, some of them possibly even playing into the early part of the second half.
“We want to see the continuity and how that group is ready to go,” coach Mike Holmgren said. “It’s a little bit of an indicator of what you might expect in the (regular-season) opener.”
Consistent with Holmgren’s philosophy, the third preseason game is typically the one where the starting units on both sides of the ball get their most extensive work. The first two preseason games are for easing back into the upcoming season, and the fourth game is about deciding final roster spots and keeping stars healthy, so tonight’s game annually marks the closest thing fans will get to a real Seahawks game.
“Around the league, typically this is the game you try to find out where you’re at offensively,” said quarterback Matt Hasselbeck, whom Holmgren said would start and play most of the first half. “That’s why I would expect this to be that game more so than the next game.”
Hasselbeck begrudgingly sat out the Seahawks’ last preseason contest, and it’s a good bet he’ll play sparingly — if at all — in next Thursday’s preseason finale against Oakland. So he welcomes whatever playing time he is afforded.
“If they tell me to go in there, then I’ll be very excited to do that,” he said. “If, for some reason, they say — like they did last week — ‘Hey, we want to play some other people,’ that’s fine too.
“I’d like to play. We’re playing at home. That’s fun.”
Of course, tonight’s game won’t come to an abrupt halt when the starters come out. There are plenty of lesser-known Seahawks who might be playing the most important game of their young careers. The Seahawks must trim their roster from 87 players to 75 by Monday, so someone could lose his job if he doesn’t rise to the occasion tonight.
First-year players like running back A.J. Harris and wide receiver Chris Jones, who have already been to training camps and gotten cut, are looking to make an impression. So are the 12 undrafted rookies on the Seahawks’ roster.
“I’ll just go out there and play my game,” said safety C.J. Wallace, a University of Washington product who did not get selected in the seven-round April draft. “If I make this game bigger than anything else, then what’s the point of playing all the rest of them? I’ll just play hard, and whatever happens, happens.
“… I think I’ve proved that I’ve got the smartness to play at this level,” Wallace added. “I think I’m more than capable of being a good player.”
Wide receiver Robert Ortiz, an undrafted rookie from San Diego State who was added to the roster last month, also played down the significance of tonight’s game.
“You’ve got to take it one day at a time,” Ortiz said after a practice earlier this week. “There are no guarantees — ever. This could have been my last day out there on the field.”
Ortiz, Wallace, Harris, tight end Andy Stokes and linebackers Marcus Rucker and Cameron Jensen are among the players on the bubble heading into tonight’s game.
One player who seems to have bought himself at least one more week — and possibly more — is quarterback Derek Devine. The undrafted rookie from Marshall University got plenty of work with the No. 3 offense last week after third-year player David Greene struggled in last weekend’s loss to Green Bay.
Devine is making a serious push for the No. 3 quarterback job, but he’s not allowing himself to think about any of that right now.
“With where I’m at with this offense, still trying to learn, I can’t get ahead of myself,” he said. “I take it practice by practice, and come (tonight’s game), I’ll take that for what it is.”
Final cuts will come next weekend, sometime after the Seahawks play the Raiders on Thursday night.
Even more important than cut-down day will be the performances of a few players who won’t have to sweat it. Players like Hasselbeck, Alexander and Branch are hoping to round into regular-season form, because this might be their last chance.
“If it goes bad at the beginning, we have to learn how to push our way through and get to the second half,” Alexander said. “If it goes well at the beginning, we have to learn how to turn the pressure on to keep on going.
“It’s just a game that marks where we are.”
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