Here is part I if you want to check in on the poll. It appears many people think there could be some validity to the possible thunder-lightning effect from our DL. I hope we're right. Upward and onward to part II.

OLB Versatility

SAM and WILL are our two OLB positions and they manifest very differently. The SAM plays on the strong-side has more responsibilities with at least one extra offensive skill player to account for. The WILL plays on the weak-side and there's greater emphasis placed on flowing to the football. I wouldn't expect any major innovation from our coaching staff in this area. The SAM and WILL, as we've come to understand them, are probably here to stay.

Our coaches also recognizes the starters at these positions. KJ Wright is our starting SAM and Leroy Hill is our starting WILL. Pete hasn't explicitly said they're starting but he did say, "we expect KJ and Leroy to be well ahead of the other guys." So it's basically their jobs to lose. KJ fits well at SAM as he's long-limbed, quick, and intelligent. Despite all of Leroy's off-field misfortunes, he still mostly looks the part of the speedy, downhill, violent-tackling LB who at one point received the franchise tag and a fat ($38M) contract. An excellent fit for the WILL position.

However, the ability to play both positions is a clear necessity for the starting OLBs on this defense. If the tight end or slot receiver motions across the line, our DL might flip but our LBs will not. I believe that this need for flexibility stems from our Leo scheme. Teams will always want to flip the strong-side in order take Bryant and Clemons/Irvin out of their element. Even if our defensive line flips in response, as we've often seen, a savvy QB can sometimes snap the ball before we reset. If our LBs had to swap as well then we'd become particularly vulnerable to unreadiness at the snap.

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Weekend everybody!

New offseason rules have long-term benefits for players - Blog - MyNorthwest.com
Seahawks fullback Michael Robinson sees another long-term benefit: players will be better prepared for life after football. "I think it's awesome. I think it gives guys time to focus on something other than football," Robinson told "Bob and Groz" this week. "You look at things that have happened with retired players and things like that. We talk about it all the time, you just can't make football your life.

Cold Hard Facts - Podcasts - MyNorthwest.com
John Clayton says the Seahawks have more capable wide receivers than spots available, which will create some competitive battles during OTAs. Clayton also talks about Russell Wilson's potential.

Pasquarelli: Pittsburgh completes overdue overhaul of O-line - Yahoo! Sports
If the Seattle Seahawks intend to install a passing game package that addresses the height issues of rookie quarterback Russell Wilson, who measured only 5-feet-10 5/8 at the combine in February, it wasn't evident at the team's rookie camp last weekend. Then again, it probably wouldn't be, since the rookie camp is basically designed as an orientation-type session, in which first-year players can get their feet on the ground. "The basics first," quarterback coach Carl Smith acknowledged.

344 Days Until The 2013 Draft: 3 Prospects To Keep An Eye On " Pick 256
The 2012 rookie class has yet to play a snap of even exhibition football and already the 2013 draft process is underway. While things will change significantly between now and next April (it wasn’t that long ago that Vontaze Burfict was considered a possible 1st rounder and Dontari Poe was a mid-round sleeper). However, college football and NFL draft junkies are always on the lookout for the next big riser, sleeper prospect or possibly the 2013 equivalent of Burfict. Here are a few guys who should be monitored closely over the next 11 months:

2013 NFL Draft: Top small school prospects - CBSSports
Today's NFL is filled with examples of players from non-FBS conferences who have made substantial impacts at the next level. DE Jared Allen (Idaho State), G Jahri Evans (Bloomsburg State) and CB Cortland Finnegan (Samford) are just a few players who weren't highly regarded as pro prospects, but shed the "small school" label and have proven to be Pro Bowlers in the NFL.

Finding the Fits: Massie, not Floyd, might provide most immediate help for Cards - CBSSports
Over the next several weeks, NFLDraftScout.com will be reviewing some of the more intriguing picks made during the 2012 NFL Draft through a series called "Finding the Fits." The goal of the series is to identify one relatively unheralded player per team who appears to be a good schematic fit and therefore more likely to be a surprise contributor early in his pro career.

The Shutdown Corner Podcast: Greg Cosell on the 2012 AFC North Draft | Shutdown Corner - Yahoo! Sports
With the draft over and all wrapped up, we thought it would be a good idea to get back on the phone with our buddy Greg Cosell of NFL Films and ESPN's "NFL Matchup," and talk about the NFL by division. Who did themselves the most favors in the draft, and who came up short when addressing their roster deficits?

Inside the playbook: Tebow and the 'Wildcat' | National Football Post
Using video to breakdown the 'QB Power.'

Does Alabama have a future stud QB on its hands? | National Football Post
How good can QB AJ McCarron be?

Will Locker take the next step in his development? | National Football Post
Second-year QB has a shot to win starting job in Tennessee.

Does Alabama have a future stud QB on its hands? | National Football Post
How good can QB AJ McCarron be?

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I started out this series (PART I, PART II & PART III) by looking at the Seahawks usage of '22' personnel - two tight ends, two running backs, and one receiver. We looked at an example of how the Seahawks passed out of this group and also at their usage of outside/inside zone runs. This grouping was used quite a bit by the Seahawks in 2011, particularly more so toward the latter part of the season as the Hawks run game got clicking, and I imagine it should continue to be a staple of the Seahawks offense going forward.

Today, I am going to take a quick look at the Hawks' use of four wide receiver sets - something they did exceedingly rarely in the 2nd half of the season. According to our six-game charting from Week 10 to Week 15, the Hawks went four-wide in 14 snaps, and featured five wide receivers only 5 times. That's 19 snaps out of 380 during that time period, so as you can see the Seahawks are anything but a spread offense. Still, even though they're 'exotic' to this offense, they're interesting to break down, and the major question in my mind is whether the Seahawks will start to feature these personnel groupings and formations more in 2012 with changing personnel, most notably at quarterback. Let's use our imaginations for a while.

Matt Flynn comes from a Green Bay system that likes to spread things out a little more, and without quoting the actual statistics on that (because I don't have them), just from memory I feel like the Packers featured 4WR, 5WR sets much more often than we saw here in Seattle last year. With a quarterback like Aaron Rodgers, it makes sense to put offensive weapons on the field and give him options to move the ball downfield quickly. Now, obviously Matt Flynn isn't on the same level as Rodgers but because he's played in that system for the last four years, it's conceivable that if he wins the starting job the offense could lean on these groupings more often. The Seahawks have shown an ability to adapt the offense to the quarterback that's playing over the last two years, with Matt Hasselbeck, Charlie Whitehurst, and Tarvaris Jackson.

If Russell Wilson enters the fray, we may see some more frequent 'spread' looks just because of his (from my perception) ability with timing passes and throwing with accuracy, a couple of things that Tarvaris Jackson struggled with for the most part in 2011 (though, the two plays I highlight below are exceptions to that statement). The Seahawks frequent use of the 'heavy' personnel groupings in 2011 makes all the sense in the world, considering who was starting at quarterback. Run the ball hard, set up play action, and play to Jackson's strengths - toughness, mobility, and more importantly, a very strong arm. In "22" formations, you don't see a ton of quick-timing plays or 'thread the needle' throws - more often than not you see a play action fake, bootleg or roll-out, and a throw over the top or dumpoff underneath on a crossing route.

We'll see, but after the jump below I'll break down a few plays.

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I think when you begin to count the ways that you like this team, you start with the young guys. Rebuilds do not happen overnight but just the fact that this team has found a few stars in the last two years alone is worth heaps of praise on Pete Carroll and John Schneider.

They inherited a team that was coming off of a 5-11 season in 2009 and a 4-12 season in 2008, and immediately they started to trim the old, the weak, the the less-talented and decided it would be better to give other guys a chance whether they be inexperienced, young, unwanted in other towns. "Come to us and show us what you got!" Pete seemed to say, welcoming with open arms anyone that wanted to compete.

Buffalo doesn't want you anymore, Marshawn Lynch? Come on over.

You don't want Chris Clemons anymore, Philadelphia? We'll take him!

Say you're ready to get in shape and work, Mike Williams? Okay, show us what you got.

The Seahawks became the land of opportunity and they rebuilt from every angle. Add free agents, make trades, have two great drafts, and maybe most interesting of all was the rebuilding that they did from within by moving players around like Red Bryant to better utilize their talents and the needs of the team. Amazing how football is a game where a "bust" can often just be a player who was put in a bad position, isn't it?

But what I want to talk about a little bit today are the 2011 rookies because I was doing some internet searching (ever heard of this Google? I believe the "G" is pronounced like a soft "J", such as in "jogging" so you say it like "Yoogle.") and came across this Football Outsiders article about the 2011 NFL All-Rookie team. Now, I did some searching on our own handy-dandy website and couldn't see if there was ever a time that we posted it on Field Gulls, but if we did then I apologize.

Though in reality, I am not that sorry. After the jump, see what they had to say about the Seahawks rookies that made the team.

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The NFLPA Rookie Premiere is taking place down in LA this weekend and the Seahawks are represented by Russell Wilson and Robert Turbin. SB Nation is down there covering the event so I'll be updating this story throughout the day with quotes and videos of the action.

Our own Joel Thorman caught up with both Robert and Russell, and passed along some snippets of their conversations...

First up, RB Robert Turbin:

On the Rookie Premiere: "My hands are cramping a little bit because I've been signing my name a lot. It's fun. Get an opportunity to meet new people, new sponsors, the trading card companies and they want your autograph."

Reaction to getting drafted by Seahawks: "I was...wow, really. It was crazy how the draft works, because the only time I talked to Seattle was at the Combine. We had a 15-minute conversation and that's it, and since then there was no contact, my agent hadn't talked to them, I hadn't talked to them. If you had asked me if I would be drafted by the Seahawks, I would've said 'no chance.'"

On loving to fish: "Our practice facility is right by the water. You see people fishing all the time."

On Pete Carroll: "He loves to compete. He's a great coach. He's going to help this team win football games, in my opinion. He's all about competition. Everything we do is a competition."

1st minicamp in Seattle: "I never ran so much during a football practice before. Everything was non-stop moving."

How do you describe yourself: "I think of myself, it's weird and may not make sense, I think of myself as a thinker and a dreamer. I'm always thinking of something and dreaming of my next move."

What's his current dream: "Get out of here and go to Seattle so I can learn my offense. I'm just kidding."

Second up, Russell Wilson:

First reaction to getting drafted by Seattle: "There's no way. Because I saw the 425 number and of all the places I could go, Seattle was one of the places I wanted to go to. When I was training before the draft, my wife and I put all of the team names into a hat for fun and I pulled out the Seahawks."

On Seattle: "The emerald city. It's beautiful. I haven't really been downtown yet, doing practices. But I'm staying not too far away. It's a great place, tremendous fans and I know the 12th man will be roaring this season."

On not playing baseball: "I was drafted in the 4th round by the Rockies in 2010. The next day my dad passed away. It was one of those situations, I wondered if it was the right thing for me to do. I played for a month in Washington and I went back to NC State and had a great season. I had to figure out if I wanted to play baseball my entire life. I committed my time to it, went to spring training and realized that it's just not what I wanted to do with my life. There's nothing better than playing quarterback, the attention to detail, the competition and leading your team up the field with two minutes left with 75,000 people cheering for or against me."

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TGIF y'all.

Fantasy Football Top Tens - Goal Line Stand - Rotoworld.com
The wheels are officially spinning on Rotoworld's 2012 Fantasy Football Guide after Chris Wesseling, Mike Clay, Pat Daugherty, and myself each submitted player-position rankings to spreadsheet wizard Adam Levitan on Tuesday. Levitan will combine our preliminary rankings to formulate a final product. All summer, Wesseling and I will tweak them as we see fit.

2011′s Best Performances: 3-4 Defensive Ends | ProFootballFocus.com
Yesterday we looked at the top performances by 3-4 outside linebackers, so sticking with the 3-4 theme we’re going to look at those players lined up at defensive end. Naturally there’s one player who features more prominently than any other, but there’s still a healthy selection of players from other teams. As ever, the grades are determined by looking at how they performed defending the run, attacking the passer, and even in coverage, while factoring in what penalties they may have given up. Here’s the Top 10:

FOOTBALL OUTSIDERS: Innovative Statistics, Intelligent Analysis | Walkthrough: Suh Love
Spring is a time for true love. And Suh love.

Small-school studs worth watching: Southern Utah QB Brad Sorensen | Draft Breakdown
A BYU transfer, Southern Utah quarterback Brad Sorensen has quickly made a name for himself as one of the top small-school gunslingers worth watching in 2012.

The sleeper QB you need to know about for 2013 | National Football Post
Southern Utah signal caller Brad Sorensen has the tools to play in the league.

Quarterbacking the Steve Spurrier Way | Smart Football
I’ve been going through the Smart Football home archives, and I found this old gem: Quarterbacking the Steve Spurrier Way, back from Spurrier’s Florida days (this is from the mid-1990s), where the Ol’ Ball Coach, with some assistance from a slightly mulleted Shane Matthews, demonstrates proper quarterbacking fundamentals. What Steve shows doesn’t feature the latest technology in quarterback mechanics, but the video is exactly right when it says that — for that era, at least — when you’re talking quarterbacks, you’re talking Steve Spurrier.

Wait, Seahawks QB Russell Wilson is short? We should build a support group… - NFL.com
The Seahawks thought enough of Russell Wilson at rookie mini-camp to thrust him into competition for the starting QB job. Yes, even after signing free agent Matt Flynn earlier in the year. But as colleague Albert Breer tells us, little is settled with Seattle’s situation under center.

NFL Draft 2013: Tyler Wilson, Matt Barkley head Top 100 players available - NFL - Sporting News
And so it starts again: The NFL Draft is a never-ending process, a mirror of nature in constantly cycling through life. One class ends, another begins. And so it is with the 2012 NFL Draft. It's over; move along to 2013.

Undersized DB Donny Lisowski impresses Seahawks with his speed | Seattle Seahawks - The News Tribune
He wasn’t even a regular starter during his final season at the University of Montana. But blessed with elite speed and a good work ethic, Donny Lisowski showed Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll enough during the team’s rookie minicamp last week as one of 34 invited tryout players to earn a three-year contract.

Cosell Talks: Newton & Stafford on the Rise : NFL Films Blog
I had a chance last week, as part of a project I am working on this summer, to once again evaluate two quarterbacks who had outstanding seasons in 2011: Matthew Stafford and Cam Newton. I had not carefully looked at their tape since January, and I always find it fascinating to revisit players, especially quarterbacks, with a fresh (and hopefully different) perspective.

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So I've updated you on the Rams and Cardinals but few of you really seemed to care, immediately jumping to "Can we talk about the 49ers?" It seems that every teams fanbase in the division believes that they are at war with the Niners and hates the Niners while they're pretty ambivalent about the other two teams that aren't the Niners and I'd say most of us agree.

It's been so long since the Rams were relevant, and then after the Rams it was the Hawks, and then briefly the Cardinals, and now the 49ers are atop the division for the first time in a decade. Of course, I believe much of this hate comes from the fact that between Joe Montana, Jerry Rice, and Steve Young, the 49ers had one of the greatest dynasties of all time. They were super successful, and so naturally, we kind of hate them. Sure, there are plenty of reasons to dislike the 49ers and their current incarnation, but it all begins with the fact that like the Cowboys, the Yankees, or the Lakers, we hate them because they've had so much and we've had so little. It just doesn't seem fair.

Of course, much of that is perspective. San Francisco hadn't made the playoffs since 2002 and they haven't had Steve Young since 1998, and they were mostly mediocre until last season, but when they do get these runs of success we immediately think, "NO! NOT YOU! ANYONE BUT YOU!" because I know that personally I was like "Oh neat, Cardinals" when they went to the Super Bowl and I would have felt nothing if they had won. In fact, I wish they had beaten those rotten Steelers.

But under Jim Harbaugh there is hope again. They've got some great players like Patrick Willis and Vernon Davis and they're coming off of a season in which they lost three games by a combined fifteen points and an OT loss to the Giants in the NFC Championship game. Even with regression, the 49ers should be good again and the favorite to win the West by most people. What have they done since that OT loss? Let's check in.

2011 Record: 13-3

Standard League Offensive Rankings: 11th scoring offense, 26th total offense, 29th passing offense, 24th passing touchdowns, 1st interceptions thrown, 20th yards per attempt, 8th rushing offense, 12th rushing touchdowns, 19th yards per carry, 1st in turnovers and turnover differential.

Standard League Defensive Rankings: 2nd scoring defense, 4th total defense, 16th passing defense, 8th passing touchdowns, 2nd in interceptions, 9th in yards per attempt, 1st rushing defense, 1st rushing touchdowns allowed, 1st yards per carry allowed, 1st in turnovers forced.

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Again, with Nate's permission I've moved his excellent Walter Thurmond 2011 Season Retrospective to the front page for further discussion and analysis. Thurmond is an exciting, albeit frustrating player in that he's made some great plays over two years and improved a lot in that time, but has had some very tough luck with injuries. He played well six games for the Seahawks last year - first at LCB then at the nickel cornerback spot that we've been talking about so much recently, but it looks like he'll start the year on the PUP list after suffering a setback in his recap from an awful leg injury suffered in Week 7 last year.

It's a bummer, because Thurmond is a very good corner - showing versatility enough to play outside (check out the play at 1:43, for example) or at nickel, in man or zone (here, for example). He plays up on the line or 15-yards off, almost like a safety. He's got the quicks that some of the Seahawks' other cornerbacks lack and when on the field in conjunction with Richard Sherman and Brandon Browner, could conceivably do some damage. A lot of the tape below you'll see Thurmond in off-coverage and it might be a little bit frustrating, much like Marcus Trufant's tape is frustrating to watch, but with most of these looks, he's doing exactly what the defense calls for. Keep the receiver in front of you, prevent the big play, stop the run and blitz on occasion.

The lowlight is probably when he gets beat for a touchdown against the Giants and Hakeem Nicks on a perfectly thrown pass from Eli Manning, but even on that play, Thurmond is in position and right with Nicks - he just doesn't get his head around quick enough or his hands up fast enough. Overall, the gametape cutup is pretty positive and again, it's too bad he'll likely be out to start the year. Watch below too for a better idea on how the Seahawks plan to utilize guys like Jeremy Lane, Marcus Trufant, and Roy Lewis - depending on who wins the nickel spot, and it's a good look at some of the requirements needed for that position.

Thanks again to Nate for putting these together, too.

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