John Schneider was just on Brock and Salk, where he discussed the Josh Wilson trade.

• The Wilson trade "just came along, based on another team's need." Felt at the cornerback position "enough people have stepped forward" and wanted to build a situation where people came forward for our players.
• Baltimore and another team stepped forward, Baltimore won out. "This gives Josh a great opportunity, moves him back home to his family and where his wife is from..." The deal was based on "Baltimore's aggressiveness."
• "This is the toughest weekend of the year."
• How can you take away this playmaker? "I totally understand where the fans are coming from, but the fact of the matter is that Josh is going to be a free agent next year and we felt we had guys who could step into his spot."
• "It affords us the opportunity to help our team in other areas."
• Salk - I take Josh Wilson every day over Kelly Jennings. "Kelly Jennings is performing at a high level right now, so is Walter Thurmond, Kennard Cox is having a very good camp. We're trying to build this thing now, we understand what happened last year, but we have a clear vision and move forward towards what we're going for. We have a specific criteria for every position. I understand the fan sentiment, because I was a big Josh Wilson fan too."
• Is this about fitting into the system? "I don't want to go down that road. I can appreciate where you're coming from, but there are difficult decisions that have to be made when you're building a football team. In Green Bay we had to move on from pro-bowlers and popular players, we moved on from Brett Favre and stuck with Aaron Rodgers. I get it, I understand it, but our job is to look forward, look down the line and try to help this ball club in any way we can."
• John Clayton said 'Man those guys in Seattle know what they're looking for, the body type, the type of people they're targeting...' this is a projection business, you're projecting where guys will be, you look at a fit. You look at Pete Carroll at USC and he had one corner under 6' tall, is that a fair sentiment? "Yeah, we all like big receivers, big corners, size, athleticism at every position. That's a fair assessment.
• "In my opinion, we're not trying to patch this thing, we're trying to build it. If you patch it, you won't advance as fast as you want to. To be successful in this league, you have to be ready to play young people, you can't be afraid to take risks and build."
• What is a "conditional" fifth rounder? "This could become a fourth round pick, they traded a 3rd and 4th for Boldin, so in my mind this was a fair trade. Some teams are easier to deal with than others, and Baltimore is one of those teams." Interesting, GB almost traded for Randy Moss for a 5th but overnight New England gave up a fourth round pick. Interesting! "Quite frankly, we really like fourth, fifth, sixth round picks. We don't look at those as throwaway picks. Look at Dexter Davis."

Time to prove it. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, introducing to you [drum roll, please]: the 2010 Seahawk Addicts Gridiron Challenge! (Password: carroll2010)

We've opted not to do a typical fantasy league this year based on the fact that only about 11 of our readers would be able to join and that's a bit exclusive at this point in time (and, we're all busier than we've been in past years). This game challenges you to build a roster of pro football players consisting of 2 QBs, 2 RBs, 2 WRs, 1 TE, 1 Kicker, and 1 Team Defense, while staying under your team's $50m salary cap.

It should be pretty fun, and like I said, it's completely open to every willing participant, rather than the first few to shoot one of us an email. Hit us up in the comments with what you'd like the prize to be. Our resources are limited, but as this is season-long, we'll try to do our best.

The Seahawks have signed former Texans DE James Wyche, according to Danny O'Neil's Twitter page.

Wyche hasn't done much to be excited about recently, as he recorded just one tackle with Houston in 2009. Take a look at his player profile page here.

The Hawks are probably just stacking different positions for depth right now for the final preseason game Thursday night. Barring some freakish performance in Oakland, Wyche will probably be cut by Saturday.

Still, no one can fault Pete Carroll and John Schneider for not exhausting every possible option at pressuring the quarterback. Chris Clemons is looking like the real deal, but he can't do the job alone.

I am still in some shock right now but Adam Caplan is reporting that CB Josh Wilson has just been traded to the Baltimore Ravens for an undisclosed draft pick. I have to admit that I didn't see that coming.

(Update) The undisclosed draft pick is now a conditional 5th round draft pick in the 2011 draft. The Seahawks have also confirmed the move.

Liz Matthews of 710 ESPN stated on her Twitter page that Josh Wilson was just practicing (30 minutes ago) with the team in preparations for the Raiders game this Thursday.

According to the Seattle PI, the Seahawks have acquired OT Tyler Polumbus from the Detroit Lions. Seattle was interested in acquiring him off of the waiver wire last week from Denver, but the Lions originally beat Seattle to it.

It's unknown at this time what Seattle gave up for Polumbus but one has to assume it will be based off of how he plays. Some quick info on the newest Seahawk, per the above link:

Polumbus, 25, started eight games for Denver last year. The 6-8, 300-pounder spent two years with the Broncos after being signed as an undrafted free agent out of Colorado.

Seahawks offensive coordinator Jeremy Bates was an assistant with the Broncos during Polumbus' rookie season in 2008

Polumbo played 31 games for Denver in the past two years, mostly on special teams, but did start eight of the Broncos' final nine games last season.

This is a great move by Seattle. Polumbus is a great OT and it came as a shock when Denver cut him. I believe that the OL is set, and we should all rest a little easier tonight knowing that Hasselbeck should be taken care of until Okung returns.

One of the first things I found myself thinking about when Seattle was playing Minnesota tit for tat while the first stringers were still in the lineup was that this was the Seattle Seahawks on the ROAD. On the ROAD! Seattle has had an absolute dismal road record going back to the 2005 season, the year they went to the Super Bowl. They were 5 - 3 that season which was the pinnacle of their road success in the 11 years since Holmgren took over in 1999 which is as far back as I checked. Since then they are 10 - 22 on the road and last season's 1 - 17 was the worst road record since the 1992 Seahawks went 1 - 17 on their way to their worst record ever at 2 - 14 under Tom "what the hell is going on" Flores.

The Seahawks have averaged just 3.18 road wins a season since the 1999 season when Mike Holmgren arrived. Holmgren was averaging around 3.3 wins per season on the road over the first 6 seasons when he finally burst through the .500 barrier and posted a 5 - 3 road record in 2005 which coupled with a perfect home stand gave the Seahawks their best record ever at 13 - 3 and their only trip to the Super Bowl. Since then they have gotten progressively worse by one game a year.

2005: 5-3,   2006: 4-4,   2007: 3-5,   2008: 2- 6,   2009: 1-7.

Going steadily down from 5 - 3 to 1 - 7 should be of concern to Pete Carroll if he's done a thorough job of researching the problems that existed in Seattle when he was hired. That would seem to be a major area of concern to a new coach coming into a broken club situation where the objective is to build it up to contend again as rapidly as possible. After Sunday's game, there was a titilating little bit of information that came from Matt Hasselbeck regarding the road curse Seattle has suffered for so long and what Pete Carroll's doing to fix it.

Clare Farnsworth has written an article that speaks to Seattle's road improvement. Said Hasselbeck:

“Pete has done a great job of really changing our mindset when we go on the road,” said Hasselbeck, well aware the team was 1-7 away from Qwest Field last season. “Understanding how to handle what we’re really up against when we’re on the road.

“If anything, I think we proved to ourselves things that have really been annoying issues on the road in the past are nothing we need to worry about because we kind of dealt with it and we know how to handle it.”

It looks like that problem has been part of the focus Pete Carroll has put on details and making sure everyone understands what's going on. He seems to have broken the problem down to as Hass put it "what we're really up against" and then given them an understanding of how to deal with it. He's changing their mindset according to Matt and if Saturday's game was any indication when Seattle was able to play another NFC powerhouse straight up for almost 3 quarters and being on top when the starters were pulled from both teams, it's working.

Yeah, pre-season doesn't mean much but the positive things to take from exhibition play are things like noticing Seattle really looked good on the road for once and hearing that it's a conscious part of the rebuild to cast aside excuses and perceived reasons they haven't been able to win on the road previously and confront what the real roadblock is while providing ways to defeat the problem is chicken soup to the soul of a football fan who has long suffered from his team's miserable road prowess over the last decade plus.

Let's see how they look at Oakland and if they look good there, we might be able to start believing that Pete can fix anything. If only the Seahawks could compete anywhere close to how hard they do at Qwest Field, they could perhaps improve their win total by two or three games a year which this year could be the difference between 6 - 10 and 9 - 7 and barely making the playoffs. In another year or two we could be looking at the difference between 10 - 6 and 13 - 3 and home field throughout like it did in 2005. It just makes so much sense for Pete Carroll to have recognized that winning on the road is more a mental fix than a physical one and we all hope he's the master of motivation we think he is. That's probably one of the single most important items Seattle can fix to improve their overall record and it's probably not something you fix by long hours on the field. Exciting news to me and all I can say is it's about time!

So, what do you guys think? What kind of impact could improving Seattle's road game have on the success of the Seahawks in the near future as it battles back into contention? Do you think it's possible Pete put his finger on what the problems were and could be on his way towards eliminating them or do you think Seattle's road woes run deeper than that and will take more time to eliminate if they can be eliminated at all?

Hasta,

BillT

As the days until the first week of the 2010 NFL regular season draw ever nearer, the Seahawks are facing a few questions where they'd much rather have answers.

Though first-round pick Russell Okung's recovery from a high ankle sprain is going well, Pete Carroll told Danny O'Neil today that the chances of Okung being in the lineup for Week One are very much in the air. Carroll:

"If you've been around me, I'm always hoping," Carroll said. "I'm optimistic that there's a chance, and we'll hold that out until there isn't. He'll do everything he can to get right. It would be a pretty special recovery if he's able to do that, but who knows."

I'm not put at ease by the use of "pretty special recovery" there, but I'm going to remain optimistic until we hear otherwise. Typical recovery time for a high ankle sprain can be up to six weeks, and given Okung just suffered the injury last week against the Packers, the safe money is going on Mansfield Wrotto starting at left tackle against the 49ers.

The most unsettling part about this is the 49er defense tied for third in the league last year in sacks. With facing an opponent like that to start the year -- a division rival, at that -- we can only hope Carroll and John Schneider have been paying close attention to the waiver wire for any backup linemen they could find. Ray Willis is also out with a knee injury, and God help us all if Sean Locklear gets another stint at Hasselbeck's blind side again.

The good news in all this? Chester Pitts is finally practicing, and he'll suit up for Thursday's game in Oakland. That's not to say he'll actually play, mind you, but the important part is we may have a bit of insurance in case we need it, provided Pitts can get back to 100 percent from knee trouble himself.

In short, while the final preseason game is usually meaningless, keep an eye on the offensive line. Wrotto had a mostly-decent go at left tackle against the Vikings, but some consistency would be encouraging.

Thank-You to Mike Sando of ESPN.com for establishing first who the first cuts were. And here is the list below according to Sando's article:

"Defensive tackle Johnathan Lewis was placed on injured reserve, kicker Clint Stitser, wide receiver Kole Heckendorf, and offensive lineman Gregg Peat were waived, putting the Seahawks roster at 75 players one day before the league's deadline to do so."

Some of these pics were obvious but again the one surprise was DE Ricky Foley.

Now on to the Raiders!