Bits and Pieces from Mora

The Seahawks held the first day of voluntary minicamp yesterday, and Coach Mora stuck around to answer questions afterward (courtesy of the TNT). I'll leave you to read the bulk of the interview, as a good deal of the questions were about Mora and his experience so far.

Firstly, we find out that LeRoy Hill is not in attendance:

On Leroy Hill’s absence and whether Mora expected him to be here: “I certainly was hoping he would be. I did not expect him to be. We would like him to be here. We would like him to be getting this work. It’s hard to ever duplicate the things that we’re doing here, the first steps of the process. But that’s a business decision that he made, and I respect that. But I certainly would’ve liked him to be here, yes.”

Mora goes on to explain that Hill hasn't actually signed the tender yet. Hopefully he decides to shake off the spite and come to work.

Now onto the injury notes:

On whether Hasselbeck has any restrictions: “Well, none of us are ready for the season. He has no restrictions in terms of what he can do in practice. We’ll see how it goes. We’ll see how he feels after three hard days. But like I said, I’m cautiously optimistic. I think that Matt has done everything in his power to get himself to the point where he can go on the field today and have a good practice and feel good, and then we just have to see how he reacts.”

It's pretty clear that Matt is not fully healthy. It's also pretty clear that Mora does not care to dole out misinformation. Want further proof?

On why Deion Branch didn’t practice today: “Deion had a little cleanup on his knee a few weeks ago—nothing serious. You guys know, when you’re coming off a major knee injury, for a couple years, sometimes you have to go in there and scope, and get loose bodies out, and clean it up, so it was very minor. This is an extra camp. There’s no need to push him back onto the field. We’re taking a cautious approach with any of those guys that are close. We want to get those guys healthy before we push them back out on the field, and he falls under that umbrella.”

Branch had more knee surgery. As minor as a little arthroscpoic cleaning may be,  Branch will be 30 at the start of the season and about 15 months off of a major knee injury. We're still a long way from the start of the season, but keep an eye on Deion.

Mora also talked about holding Walter Jones and Mike Wahle out of practice as both are dinged up. He plans on taking a "cautious approach" with both.

I know it's just early season activity, but I'll be damned if in not getting excited for football season.