Field Gulls
The Seattle Seahawks are getting healthier, having designated safety Julian Love, defensive tackle Jarran Reed, and wide receiver/returner Dareke Young for return to practice on Wednesday. All of these players have spent at least the past month on injured reserve, and will have 21 days from Wednesday to go from IR to the active roster or else their season is over.
Seattle has already brought Robbie Ouzts and Christian Haynes back from IR, which is an important thing to note when you consider how many players they currently have on some injury list:
The Seahawks have two players back from IR and another nine who could come back this regular season.
There’s one problem: it’s not possible for Seattle to activate them all.
Per NFL rules, a maximum of eight designations for return from an injured list allowed during the regular season. If a team makes the playoffs, they are granted an additional two postseason slots for a maximum of 10. It is possible for one player to be activated twice in this instance, but it’d be two slots lost.
It doesn’t take a math genius to figure out that Seattle has more IR players who can return than there are available spots.
Mills is in his final week of practice before the team has to decide whether he’ll get to play this year or if this will be a rookie redshirt, in which case his contract will toll over. Surratt’s ankle injury against the Tennessee Titans looked not good, so it’s possible that the special teams standout may be out longer than the four-week minimum. Holani’s hamstring injury was never given any sort of severity specification from Mike Macdonald, but if it’s anything close to what Julian Love experienced, he may be out for awhile.
Eric Saubert is an interesting name to watch, if only for undrafted rookie Nick Kallerup filling his blocking tight end role adequately. He could’ve returned last week and did not, and he wasn’t activated for practice this week.
Lastly, Tory Horton can come back for the Los Angeles Rams rematch, although a short week would impact his practices, which would essentially be walk-through sessions. We’ll hopefully know more soon about the dynamic rookie receiver.
One thing that is clear is Seattle will have to be mindful of its IR usage for the remainder of the regular season. It’s likely that Young,...
