Seahawks offensive line coach, players much improved

By Liz Mathews

Seahawks offensive line coach Tom Cable spoke to the media Tuesday after practice for the first time since returning from back surgery. He is officially off the Seahawks’ injury report.

“Your choice is either you lose your left leg, or you go get this done,” Cable responded when asked about the extent of his injury. “Now you can move forward and I feel great. It obviously worked. The incision is a big one, so that’s really the only negative left is kind of letting that heal up.”

Cable said that four rods, a cage and a couple bone grafts were inserted during his surgery — but the offensive line coach didn’t miss a beat.

From the hospital, Cable was able to view the practices and talk with the players via Skype. Last week he was even healthy enough to travel to New York with the team and coach from a specially equipped chair in the press box.

“The whole group, the staff, Pete [Carroll] and everyone have been so helpful in helping me get through it,” Cable said. “You know, I’m in the hospital and I’ve still got film to game plan and do all that stuff — they’re getting it to me, so I never had to miss anything which was really cool. My days were kind of short, but I just got a lot of stuff done. Everybody did a great job of really helping me. That made it all possible, really.”

And what Cable saw on the field from his players was encouraging too.

“I think that we’re on to something that every player gets to put their hands on and be excited about their role,” Cable said. “It involves everybody, which is really cool. We had talked about it for awhile. If you noticed, and you probably did when you were reporting, but our success early was when we kind of went up-tempo.

“So when you really start to evaluate who you are and your youth and the time missed and all those things, you start to finally succeed. So it’s brought us to this point. I think the really fun thing about it though is that all 11 guys have a role in this type and this style of play and it takes them all.”

Cable pointed to both the rookies on the right side, guard John Moffitt and tackle James Carpenter, as two players who have shown significant improvement.

“Every day they get better now,” Cable said. “They understand what you’re asking them, they understand what it takes to compete at this level, how to prepare and all those kind of things. So the talent that we drafted is now showing up, but you had to get it prepared and trained and all that — it was a process to go through.”

Cable said that he had told the team going into the Arizona game that they were no longer kids — they were NFL linemen now.

So you be the judge. Would love to get your thoughts on the recent play of the offensive line, so leave your comments below.

Practice notes

The Seahawks are not required to release an official practice report during the bye week and the media are only allowed to report what is announced during interviews and press conferences.

Cable said on Tuesday that center Max Unger is now experiencing some sort of foot issue. “This showed up right after the game yesterday morning — not Sunday and not Sunday night, it came yesterday morning,” Cable said. “We’ll see what it is. It doesn’t look to be anything too bad. Right now they’re saying we should plan like we’re going to have him next week, so we’ll move toward that and see what happens. It’s something to do with the foot, but I don’t know the details of it.”

Left guard Robert Gallery has recovered more quickly than expected and is now likely to return to full practice following the bye week.

The Seahawks practice Wednesday morning before breaking Thursday through Sunday.