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Joey Galloway’s old number has been willed to a reserve tight end. Won’t be much dropoff in production there, even if the new guy doesn’t stick.

House Ballard’s old number has been assigned to the rookie who, alas, is pulling a Joey Galloway at the moment.

And the only remnant of Sam Adams’ old jersey was stretched across the back of a fan who on Sunday morning wrangled more autographs on his souvenir football in five minutes than Sam wrangled quarterbacks to the turf in the past two seasons.

Welcome to Seattle Seahawks Training Camp 2000. It’s New Time.

When the Seahawks jogged out to their first practice at Eastern Washington University, Tiger Woods was putting the screws to David Duval at St. Andrews, Lance Armstrong was mugging for tourists at the Eiffel Tower and Michael Johnson and Maurice Greene were readying their alibis for later in the evening.

These many diversions apparently conspired to keep the Seahawks’ local welcoming committee for the morning workout down to a curious couple of hundred - though it’s possible the true believers were at their churches of choice praying for a veteran wide receiver.

Hey, there is a god. Sean Dawkins agreed to terms and should be in camp by this afternoon.

Presciently, the Seahawks haven’t already given his old number to someone else.

There are still enough old faves around - Cortez Kennedy, Ricky Watters, Shawn Springs, Michael Sinclair - that the Hawks’ 14th visit to Cheney isn’t a convention of strangers. And it’s certainly true that National Football League training camps are always teeming with who-dat guys, grinding through two-a-days in a desperate quest to avoid fall-back employment at the neighborhood Gold’s Gym, asking if anybody needs a spot.

It’s just that a number of Seattle’s who-dat guys are going to be starters.

“You know that there’s going to be a lot of positions being heavily competed for,” said quarterback Jon Kitna, “so that’s good. It does bring some excitement to camp, and some question marks.

“You’re trying to figure out guys’ names.”

Him, too?

Roster churn is a hard reality of professional sports life, and the 25 percent turnover the Seahawks have endured from a year ago isn’t all that dramatic. That the starting lineup has taken a 36 percent hit is, or would seem to be for a franchise that just ended a 10-year playoff absence.

Didn’t hear anyone hollering “Break up the Hawks!” at season’s end, did you?

But another hard reality is that the one thing Paul Allen’s money can’t buy is a bigger salary cap. So for the long-term good of the franchise, Seahawks coach/gee-em/exec-veep Mike Holmgren is biting some short-term bullet.

You might want to grab a chew, yourselves.

This, of course, is not how the Seahawks are selling it, and there’s no shame in that. No sense making a concession speech before the first primary.

“I’m looking forward to doing big things,” insisted Watters, the veteran running back whose legs look like they have another 122 starts in them. “I think expectations will be higher this year and I think they should be.”

Easy, big fella. Remember, the West Division championship you won a year ago earned you a schedule with more bite this fall. Just holding serve can be a step forward, too.

Still, it’s obvious that the tone is being set at the top. Having never coached a sub-.500 team in eight NFL seasons, Holmgren is hardly receptive to suffering such an indignity now.

“I’m not willing to sacrifice one thing this season,” Holmgren insisted. “We’ll have young people who will have to play a little before normal, but they’re good players.”

He talked about his corps of wide receivers, noting that with Dawkins’ addition and the return of Derrick Mayes, the youngsters will be Nos. 3, 4 and 5 in the rotation - 25-reception guys. It’s a little more dicey on the right side of the offensive line, where Floyd Wedderburn and Todd Weiner have but one NFL start between them - and holdout No. 1 draft pick Chris McIntosh apparently has some attitude. Last year’s No. 1 pick, Lamar King, will get his chance at defensive end because “we didn’t draft him to sit on the bench,” Holmgren noted. And Anthony Simmons, pressed into service at middle linebacker last year, moves to the outside “where he has a chance to go to the Pro Bowl,” the coach maintained.

Skeptics can suggest that all this is being said before the first blown knee, but that’s not exactly accurate. Washington State grad Robbie Tobeck, one of Holmgren’s two medium-profile free-agent signings expected to start at center, watched Sunday’s action in shorts, his season purportedly wiped out by a freakish injury in a May workout.

Realism isn’t the enemy. With this much inexperience, impatience is.

“You want everything to be right, right away,” Holmgren acknowledged, “and it’s not going to be.”

So he watched a first practice that seemed regrettably rife with fumbles and drops and called it good, scoring mostly the enthusiasm and not the style points. Kitna, too, chose to focus on what youngsters like Karsten Bailey, Darrell Jackson and James Williams - those young receivers - did right and not wrong.

“For the first day, it was amazing,” he said. “But I told Karsten, `Don’t be offended if somebody calls you Darrell or calls Darrell you.’ They look exactly alike out there.”

Probably could have given them the same jersey, except that there were plenty of old numbers to go around.