Seahawks going with Bradley Sowell over Garry Gilliam at RT

RENTON – Bradley Sowell is in and Garry Gilliam is out as Seattle’s starting right tackle.

The Seahawks are sticking with the change they made early in their 14-5 loss to Tampa Bay on Sunday, when they pulled Gilliam after three plays and replaced him with Sowell for the rest of the game. Coach Pete Carroll said Wednesday that Sowell will start Sunday night against Carolina and didn’t give much of an explanation when asked about what led to the decision.

“Just the competition,” Carroll said. “It’s about the competition.”

Offensive-line coach Tom Cable gave a similarly unelaborated response when asked about the reasoning for the move and later when asked if he views it as permanent, saying, “We compete around here.”

Gilliam was benched after the Seahawks went three-and-out on their opening possession Sunday, which was the first sign of trouble for what would be a miserable day for Seattle’s entire offensive line. That first drive ended when the Buccaneers ran a defensive-line stunt and got pressure on quarterback Russell Wilson through the right side of Seattle’s line, a breakdown in pass protection that Carroll lamented Monday on “Brock and Salk” without specifying who was at fault.

Needless to say, it wasn’t just any one or even all three of those plays that led to Gilliam’s benching. It was more likely a final straw.

This change seemed to have been building for a while. Gilliam was put on notice two weeks ago when Cable said the competition was on at right tackle with Sowell, who was returning from a sprained knee and had lost his starting job at left tackle to rookie George Fant. The Seahawks consider every position to be open for competition, of course, but Cable wouldn’t have expressed that had Seattle been satisfied with Gilliam’s play.

He started the next two games before getting the quick hook on Sunday. Sowell had his issues in relief as did the rest of Seattle’s offensive line. Brock Huard explained in his Chalk Talk video how Sowell made a pre-snap mistake on Wilson’s first interception. The Seahawks either saw enough from him on Sunday to stick with him indefinitely at right tackle – which is not his natural position – or they are at the end of their rope with Gilliam. Or both.

Sowell, 27, signed a one-year deal with the Seahawks over the offseason and started the first six games at left tackle before spraining his MCL against Arizona. Cable gave what seemed like a telling comment about the switch when asked what Seattle likes about him. The first thing he mentioned was the same thing that’s considered one of the bigger knocks on Gilliam: physicality.

“I think you see in that game his physicalness, his strength, obviously his length and size,” Cable said of Sowell and how he played Sunday. “All those things, they kind of fit for what we’re trying to do. It was pretty obvious right when he went in that it was a good thing.”

Cable was asked how he can make Gilliam more physical.

“I think to play on the line of scrimmage at this level, it has to be part of your makeup,” Cable said. “So we continue to stress that to him and work with him on it, and obviously for every guy and everyone involved, it’s up to you to do what’s asked of you and to do it the best you can.”

The demotion is another step back for Gilliam, a former undrafted free agent whose career with Seattle is on a sudden downward trend in its third season.

The Seahawks thought so highly of him during the 2015 offseason that they shuffled their offensive line – in August, no less – in order to insert him at right tackle. He started the entire season there, and the progress he made over the final 11 games was something Cable cited as a reason for his belief that Gilliam could make the switch to left tackle this past offseason, after Russell Okung left in free agency. But Gilliam missed an extended amount of time after having surgery to remove a cyst in his knee and he didn’t take hold of the new position. Seattle pulled the plug in training camp and moved him back to right tackle.

“If you remember back in camp, he had a little but of a knee issue, and so that kind of retarded that thought and you really don’t have time to wait on that at that time,” Cable said. “So it never came to fruition.”

In three months, Gilliam has gone from the expected starter at left tackle back to the right side and is now out of a starting job entirely.

“I think the opportunity for someone else to take his spot was there,” Carroll said, “so we’re going to see how Brad looks and how he does.”