Stacy: The 3 biggest Seahawks questions between now and Week 1

The Seattle Seahawks wrap up preseason play with a Friday finale in Kansas City against the Chiefs. After that, it’s time to whittle down the roster to 53 players by Sunday’s 3 p.m. deadline.

Who makes the cut? Projecting Seattle Seahawks’ 53-man roster

With so few real roster questions — that’s what happens when you return 20 of 22 starters from your championship roster — we’re instead left with entering the start of the regular season looking elsewhere. So as camp and the preseason come to a conclusion, here are our three biggest questions.

1. Will Nick Emmanwori play Week 1?

There’s been little update on this front since the beginning of training camp in July, when the team placed second-year safety Nick Emmanwori on the preseason PUP list as he recovered from ankle surgery. Then, ESPN’s Brady Henderson reported Emmanwori was expected to start the season.

The latest? Head coach Mike Macdonald, who’s typically tight-lipped with injury updates, declined to answer Wednesday when asked when Emmanwori would have to start practicing to be available Week 1. That doesn’t have to mean anything at all. For what it’s worth, the team has suddenly changed their answer here. Macdonald never stated publicly that Emmanwori would definitely play Week 1.

“We’re not sure on Week 1 yet,” Macdonald told ESPN on NFL on Aug. 7. “I think what’s great about the way Nick is taking on this process is that we’re not putting timetables on anything. It’s just let’s put our foot on the gas and go rock and roll every day and see where it takes us. I think we’re optimistic. But let’s go about it with the right mindset and be as aggressive as possibly can and kind of let the results fall into place.”

If the team expects Emmanwori to be ready, or to miss fewer than the first four weeks, he’ll need to be activated from the active/PUP list before that Sunday roster deadline. Seattle turned to D’Anthony Bell for depth there when Emmanwori missed time at the start of last season and would presumably have him help there again should Emmanwori be out for the Sept. 9 season opener.

2. Where will they look to add depth?

The Seahawks have questions at safety and wide receiver, having lost wide receiver Jake Bobo and rookie safety Bud Clark to season-ending injuries last week in Nashville. They have some internal solutions here, particularly at receiver where several players (Cody White and Montorie Foster Jr. chief among them) are competing at the bottom of the depth chart, but don’t rule out the possibility of them signing a player cut from another team.

The Seahawks’ top candidates to replace injured WR Bobo

One option? My co-host, Seahawks Radio Network analyst and former NFL wide receiver Michael Bumpus, likes Cedric Tillman, a 2023 third-round pick recently released by the Browns who can add size (6 foot 3, 215 pounds) and experience (833 yards and five touchdowns over three seasons with Cleveland) to Seattle’s WR room.

3. Can Jadarian Price fill the Ken Walker-sized hole on the roster?

One of the single biggest questions entering the preseason didn’t get much of an answer.

The Seahawks had massive questions at running back entering the offseason with the departure of Super Bowl MVP Kenneth Walker III and a major injury to Zach Charbonnet. Using their first-round pick on Notre Dame running back Jadarian Price made sense, but neither fans nor coaches got to see him in the preseason after lower body soreness kept him out of several days of practice, and he will sit again Friday to miss the entire preseason schedule.

“He’s done a great job, he really has,” Macdonald said to reporters Thursday about Price. “All three downs. I mean, he’s a rookie in terms of there’s going to be things that we’re going to need to attack in his game that will show itself in games. We haven’t been afforded the luxury of having the bodies right now at running back to give him the reps maybe in a game that we’d normally give to a rookie runner. But he’s shown that we’re really confident in him going into Week 1.

“He’s kind of earned that decision for us to feel good about it, even though just about any other circumstance you definitely want really any other rookie to get preseason exposure and experience.”

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