Hill: "It's a Playmaker Position, and I can fill it."

Clare Farnsworth over at Seahawks.com has a nice write-up on the Linebackers  and, specifically, Leroy Hill. Hill is being looked at by the Seahawks as needing to fill the role that Derrick Brooks filled in Tampa: a fast, strong, playmaking linebacker. Hill sheds some light on how he viewed the franchise tag removal:

"I wasn’t even listening to the media reports, because I knew what was going on," he said. "I know a lot of people said, ‘Oh, they dropped him’ and ‘Oh, they don’t really want him.’ But that wasn’t the case.

"As long as I knew what was going on, and the team knew what was going on, it didn’t matter what anyone else said or thought. I knew it was all business. It was business from my side, and business from their side, too. I’m just glad we came to an understanding."

Clare also breaks out a depth chart which is actually pretty helpful, since the breakdown of how the LBs are going to be used is a little confusing. Our Weakside LBs pan out to be Hill, Herring, Dave Philistin; MLBs are Tatupu, Hawthorne, Tony Taylor; Strongside are Curry, D.D. Lewis, and Lance Laury. Looking at that, you can assume we're keeping seven LBs, especially since Herring and Lewis can play any of the three positions in a pinch.