Can Seahawks make do with their current crop of O-linemen?

The biggest question facing the Seahawks three weeks before they begin the regular season schedule is if their offensive line will be up to task in 2015.

BY DANNY O

Aug 20, 2015, 2:04 PM Updated: 2:08 pm

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The Seahawks will start three linemen at positions they've never started at in Friday's preseason game. (AP)

(AP)

They make do.

That could be the motto for Tom Cable. It’s certainly the reality on Seattle’s offensive line.

The Seahawks first assembled and then retained the players at the heart of a defense that has allowed the fewest points in the league for three successive seasons. They have re-signed a total of one player on their offensive line.

Seattle not only drafted, developed and rewarded a quarterback now among the league’s highest paid at his position, but acquired a top-tier tight end for him to throw to. The offensive line that will be trusted to protect that quarterback? Well, it’s very much a work in progress three weeks before the season starts.

On Friday in Kansas City, you can expect to see a former collegiate tight end (Garry Gilliam) starting at right tackle next to a converted defensive lineman (J.R. Sweezy) while a three-man competition continues at center. Oh, and we haven’t even gotten to Justin Britt, last year’s second-round pick who played right tackle last season but this week switched to guard, a position he hadn’t played since his freshman year at Missouri.

Can Seattle make do with that group up front? It’s the biggest question facing the Seahawks three weeks before they begin their regular-season schedule in St. Louis, against one of the very best defensive lines in football.

This isn’t a question of talent. Coach Pete Carroll has said he thinks this group of offensive linemen is the team’s best total assembly of ability at the positive. Cable believes this group has a toughness that’s as impossible to teach as it is to fake.

“This group will have a tougher, kind of a more grinder mentality across the board,” Cable said.

What it won’t have is experience.

Of the 15 linemen currently on Seattle’s roster, only two have more than four seasons of experience: Russell Okung, who’s in his sixth season, and Lemuel Jean-Pierre. Because Okung remains on the six-year deal he signed as the No. 6 overall pick in 2010, Jean-Pierre is the only offensive lineman the Seahawks have re-signed to an additional contract.

It wasn’t always this way. During the first two years of Carroll’s coaching tenure, the Seahawks brought in veterans to try and bulwark that line. They signed Ben Hamilton and Chester Pitts in 2010, two old hands who had previously played for offensive line coach Alex Gibbs, who retired before he worked a regular-season game in Seattle. The next season it was Robert Gallery, a player who went from a bust of a left tackle to a Pro Bowl guard under Cable.

But for the past three years, the Seahawks have trusted in their draft picks and Cable’s development of those picks. It has been an undeniably inexpensive route, allowing Seattle to spend millions to retain other core players while letting veterans like Breno Giacomini, Paul McQuistan and then James Carpenter leave as free agents.

And on Friday, Seattle will start Britt at left guard, Gilliam at right tackle and Drew Nowak at center. None of those three have started at that specific position in any game in the NFL.

It’s not an experiment so much as the next step in evaluation.

“What we’re trying to do is get the best guys out there in the huddle,” Cable said earlier this week, “and find out where they fit.”

In other words, the Seahawks are making do. How well they do that will influence the trajectory of this season.