Kam Chancellor, Seahawks’ secondary banged up from win over Baltimore

RENTON – Seattle’s secondary is a banged-up bunch following Sunday’s win over Baltimore, during which Kam Chancellor, DeShawn Shead and Marcus Burley were all injured.

Coach Pete Carroll said Monday that Chancellor is still “pretty sore” after bruising his tailbone and that his chances of practicing on Wednesday seem unlikely. Chancellor left the game for good in the first quarter after landing hard on his backside while breaking up a pass.

Shead and Burley both injured their ankles. Burley took over at nickelback when Jeremy Lane moved to right cornerback once Shead was sidelined. Shead returned to the game once Burley went down.

“We have to wait and see. We have to go through the week here,” Carroll said of their ankle injuries. “Burley is a re-injure, kind of a re-tweak. We think he should be OK. DeShawn, he’s been a great guy battling through stuff. We’ll see how it goes, but we really won’t know until the end of the week on that.”

Seattle’s cornerback depth is already thin after the team released former starter Cary Williams last week. Rookie fifth-round pick Tye Smith is Seattle’s fifth cornerback. He has only appeared in two games and has yet to play a snap on defense.

Kelcie McCray replaced Chancellor at strong safety and played well, according to Carroll. Seattle acquired McCray in a trade with Kansas City just before the start of the regular season, while Chancellor was still holding out. He has since been one of Seattle’s top special-teams contributors but hadn’t played on defense until the closing minutes of Seattle’s blowout win over Minnesota last week. He played 49 of Seattle’s 58 defensive snaps Sunday in what was by far his most extensive action of the season.

Carroll said he took a close look at every one of them.

“I was really fired up about him,” he said of McCray. “He’s come a long ways with our system. We have a lot of intricacies that we hope to see the awareness and the positioning. He had a couple plays that he’d liked back, but he had some really good plays, too. He was very efficient and he was in the right spots all day long, gave us really good discipline. I was really fired up about the way he played. So knowing that he may have to play more, it was worth noting that he did a good job, stepped into the opportunity and made something happen there. It was good.”

Here are some additional personnel notes from Carroll’s press conference:

• Tight end Luke Willson injured his ribs Sunday and had an MRI Monday to determine if it was something more severe than a bruise. Carroll said he hadn’t seen the results.

• Defensive lineman Michael Bennett has a sore toe, the same one that has previously bothered him.

• Linebacker Brock Coyle will be activated this week off injured reserve/designated to return, as Carroll had previously indicated would be the case. Coyle injured his knee earlier this season. He’s been practicing, but per rules of short-term IR, Sunday’s game against Cleveland is the first in which he is eligible to resume playing after missing the requisite amount of time.

• Carroll confirmed that running back Thomas Rawls isn’t expected to need surgery to repair the ankle fracture he sustained Sunday.