Five things to watch as the Seahawks hold their mandatory mini-camp Tuesday-Thursday.
The Seahawks will hold their mandatory mini-camp this week.
Practices will be held Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, after which the team will break for the summer.
As the Seahawks gather one last time before the 2017 season truly begins, here are five things to watch, listed in no particular order.
1, Austin Davis and the beginnings of an intriguing backup QB battle.
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Seattle’s flirtation with Colin Kaepernick will make this one of the more-scrutinized backup QB competitions in the NFL with the Seahawks leaving themselves open to all kinds of second-guessing depending on how things unfold.
Obviously this is a battle that figures to go through to the fourth preseason game. But with Davis now having a few OTAs under his belt, mini-camp also should provide a better judge of where things stand heading into the summer.
And at some point Seattle could have an interesting decision on its hands. The Seahawks haven’t ruled out that they could keep three QBs on the 53-man roster, something they haven’t done often since Russell Wilson emerged in 2012 due to Wilson’s durability, which was shaken a little last season with the three injuries he suffered during the season. Seattle may not want to risk waiving Boykin, depending on how QB situations develop around the NFL, and losing him. So the question ultimately could become if Davis does enough to convince Seattle to keep a third QB.
2, The return of Michael Bennett and Cliff Avril.
The two veteran defensive ends weren’t present for any of the OTAs open to the media — Bennett continuing his annual tradition of preferring to work out on his own. Avril, meanwhile, is also recovering from sports hernia surgery and it’ll be interesting to see how involved he is in things this week.
To be clear, no one seemed concerned that the two weren’t around for OTAs. But with the mini-camp being mandatory, each is expected to be in attendance and potentially fill out a defensive line that with Frank Clark also ailing the last two weeks often looked nothing like its usual self during OTAs.
3, The health of key players such as Earl Thomas, Kam Chancellor, Luke Joeckel and Tyler Lockett.
So far, the injury picture seems pretty good for the Seahawks this offseason as each of the players mentioned above has been reported to be either on or ahead of schedule to be ready for the 2017 season (in fact, the only player on the 90-man roster who at the moment appears as if he won’t be ready for the start of the season is cornerback DeShawn Shead, who is rehabbing an ACL injury suffered in the divisional playoff loss against Atlanta).
This is obviously not the time of year the Seahawks need to push anyone physically so we may not see much more of any of the above players than we did in OTAs. Thomas’ progress was one of the big stories early in OTAs with coach Pete Carroll declaring there was zero reason to question that he’ll be ready for the start of the 2017 season. Chancellor got his first significant work Friday as he recovers from surgery on both ankles. Lockett has regularly taken some punts and kickoffs and a few passes in early work while Joeckel has also gotten in some work during early drills.
The bigger key for the Seahawks this week may be simply to avoid any further injuries.
4, Jimmy Graham.
Maybe one of the more-overlooked positives of the Seahawks’ offseason has been the health of Graham, who this year is a full participant in everything after a year ago at this time still rehabbing from a knee injury that ended his 2015 season in November.
For all the consternation about how Graham has been used by the Seahawks it’s easy to forget how productive he was a year ago — his 923 receiving yards was the third-most among NFL tight ends behind only Kansas City’s Travis Kelce (1,125) and Carolina’s Greg Olsen (1,073).
Now with a full and healthy offseason Graham could be primed for an even more productive year. He certainly has all the motivation he needs with just one season left on his contract and the prospect of possibly becoming an unrestricted free agent in 2018.
5, The offensive line.
The progress of the line will be the omnipresent storyline of the offseason and training camp.
Don’t expect any answers during a three-day mini-camp.
But another week will give that much more information to the coaching staff entering the summer.
With Joeckel limited, the No. 1 line has typically consisted of LT George Fant, LG Rees Odhiambo, C Justin Britt, RG Mark Glowinski and RT Germain Ifedi.