Offensive line ranks as one of Seattle Seahawks’ biggest questions
ST. LOUIS – They have, they said, blocked out the noise.
Now it’s time for the Seattle Seahawks’ offensive line to prove it can block the St. Louis Rams.
A number of questions hover over the Seahawks as they enter the regular season: How will Kam Chancellor’s holdout impact things? How might newly acquired Jimmy Graham change the offense? Are they mentally over the Super Bowl loss? How the offensive line progresses this season, though, could be the most critical.
But that’s a question the offensive linemen say they aren’t asking themselves.
“I have no worries about the talent, or like how we are going to be as a unit, at all,” right tackle Garry Gilliam said. “It’s just a matter of going out there and doing it, getting our lineup the right way, having our assignments down, communicating.
“If someone is going to judge an offense or an offensive line or a person off a few snaps in a preseason game, I think they are doing themselves an injustice, as well as the players they are judging. The coaches know what they are doing.”
Gilliam and the rest of the line will have a chance to back that up in a hurry against the Rams, who have a defensive line some say is the best in the NFL.
It features five former first-round draft choices led by end Robert Quinn, who won some awards as the best defensive player in the NFL in 2013, when he had 19 sacks.
The Rams’ defense tends to be at its best against Seattle. St. Louis has 25 sacks against the Seahawks since Russell Wilson became quarterback in 2012, the most of any NFL team.
“This is as good of a front as you’re going to see,’’ Seahawks coach Pete Carroll said. “This is a great test for us, and coming out of the opener, we’ll have a good sense for how we’re doing and where we are.”
The questions about the Seahawks’ offensive line begin in the middle, where Drew Nowak will get his first start at center, having won the right to take over for Max Unger. Nowak has played in only two NFL games, on special teams with Jacksonville in 2013.
But he beat out veteran Lemuel Jeanpierre and Patrick Lewis to replace Unger, a two-time Pro Bowl pick who was traded to New Orleans as part of the deal for Graham.
Nowak is one of three players starting in new spots on the line. Gilliam, a second-year player, has just one career start and has never started at right tackle, and Justin Britt, after starting all of last season at right tackle, is at left guard.
Offensive-line coach Tom Cable decided on those three as starters to join holdovers Russell Okung (left tackle) and J.R. Sweezy (right guard) after the first exhibition game against Denver, and he has professed nothing but confidence in their play since.
Asked this week about the test posed by the Rams, Cable responded: “It’s a test for them, too.”
Though the play of Gilliam and Britt will be vital in making the new-look line a success, the most responsibility might ride with Nowak and how he works with Wilson in setting the blocking assignments.
One of Unger’s strengths was his ability to make the blocking assignments at the line of scrimmage.
The past three years, Unger typically would make the initial call at the line of scrimmage with Wilson having what amounted to veto power if he didn’t like what he saw and wanted to change it.
In an attempt to ease in Nowak while taking advantage of the increasing experience of Wilson, the initial responsibility for the call will typically rest with Wilson.
“A lot of the calls are on me from the get-go,” Wilson said. “That’s not a bad thing at all. I’m looking forward to the challenge. That’s why you study all day, that’s why you get prepared. Drew knows what he’s doing, though. There’s no doubt in my mind that he’s going to be playing at a high level.”
Cable and Carroll have cited the chemistry Nowak has built with Wilson regarding line calls as a reason he won the center job.