Field Gulls
We’re a day away from the second Seattle Seahawks preseason under head coach Mike Macdonald. The last time we saw the Seahawks in preseason, outside linebacker Uchenna Nwosu suffered a knee injury against the Cleveland Browns in what was the only time Macdonald played his starters on both sides of the ball.
In today’s NFL, established starters can often go the entirety of preseason without as much as a snap. Others like Kansas City Chiefs coach Andy Reid are still willing to give their first-teamers some run before the meaningful games begin in September. Ahead of Thursday’s preseason opener against the Las Vegas Raiders, Mike Macdonald indicated that starters wouldn’t play. But how is he defining starters, specifically? Well, just because Grey Zabel is essentially locked in as starting left guard doesn’t mean we won’t see him play.
“It’s not like, ‘Hey, we’re taking the 22 guys that are penciled in with the ones and they’re not playing.’ It’s select guys,” Macdonald said in his media availability. “Some position battles are still going. If there’s younger guys, like Nick [Emmanwori] will get some good reps. You’ll see Grey [Zabel] initially, Elijah [Arroyo] will play. So all those young guys, they need that, they need experience and reps too.”
Macdonald also effectively indicated that we should see more established names playing the following Friday against the Kansas City Chiefs, with the finale against the Green Bay Packers likely to have few or no starters playing due to the joint scrimmage beforehand.
“I don’t think there’s a scientific tried and true, ‘You have to do it this way’ method,” Macdonald said. “You look at the studies and things the league tells you, things that we handle in house. The rule of thumb is you want two to three pretty good intense exposures before you kick it off. You can manufacture that in practice with borderline live periods. It’s hard to do that in house, so I think that’s where the joint practices come from, where it’s a little bit more of a controlled environment, but still intense, which is important. And then some teams handle it by playing their starters in preseason games, and you can get it done that way. We’re doing the blended approach this year. Coach [Andy] Reid, they have a history of playing their starters in the game, so our guys will have an opportunity to go next week, and then we have the practice against Green Bay. Then the option to get guys some extra reps in the game as well. I think it gives some flexibility and opportunity to play against really good competition before we get ready to play the season.”
The only real difference between this year and last is having the starters play the middle game, which is not coincidentally their last home game before Week 1 of the regular season. This is all, of course, subject to change depending on how Macdonald feels things are going.
For what it’s worth, Pete Carroll...
