Seahawks Julian Love suffers hamstring set back

During his weekly press briefing, Seahawks head coach Mike Macdonald announced that safety Julian Love had suffered a setback while recovering from a hamstring injury

“Julian Love had a bit of setback with his hamstring last week, so he won’t practice today, and his game status right now is in jeopardy, so we’ll work through that the rest of the week moving forward,” Macdonald said.

 Love has been on the inactive list for the last four games. After starting the first games of the season, Love landed on the inactive list for the Seahawks’ week three contest against the Saints. In Week four, Love played all 67  defensive snaps in the Seahawks’ win over the Cardinals. That was the last game Love played in this season. The hope was that Love would be return after the bye week.

 To make things worse, Macdonald was asked if Injured Reserve would be an option. His answer was yes. While he was uncertain about whether a possible move would be made, the fact that the usually coy  Macdonald directly answered the questions is not good news for a quick recovery for Love. If he were placed on injured reserve, Love would have to miss four weeks before he can return.   Ty Okada   has started every game that Love has missed.

RESHUFFLE OF THE BACK END

The good news for the defense is that cornerback Devon Witherspoon and outside linebacker Derick Hall returned to the practice field on Wednesday. The return of Witherspoon is sure to cause some shuffling in the cornerback rotation.

Rookie Nick  Emmanwori has started in two of the team’s last three games. The one game Emmanwori did not start was the Jaguars game, and he participated in 72 of  the 76 defensive snaps. With Emmanwori finding his footing, how will Macdonald have to make some decisions regarding the safety position?  Emmanwori  has been playing the nickel role, the same position Witherspoon played before his injury

“I think if you look at it through those lenses and one, it’s exciting that you have those two players that can play that position, which is awesome. We’ve got to make sure we put a tight enough plan where we can take advantage of both skill sets, “ Said Macdonald. “  That’s kind of our burden to bear as coaches to make sure that it’s clean and clear so the guys can go play the way they can play. But you know how we feel about Spoon (Devon Witherspoon). The guy’s a tremendous player and Nick (Emmanwori) is at the beginning of a great career. He’s off to a great start.”

Look for Macdonald to shift Witherspoon to one of  the outside cornerback positions. Macdonald was asked about the dilemma of multiple defensive backs returning to practice.

“We’ve talked about how we’re always going to be designing our game plans and calling games based off what we feel like our guys do well. I’m giving you a lot of coach-speak in this presser, but really that has to be the lens of how you build it. I think that kind of paints you a picture, but it’s also why we train the way we do. We don’t take practices off, we try to maximize reps, now we try to lever things where we can manage player loads and things like that, said Macdonald. “

 But to bank all those reps for the 90 guys initially on your roster and then the eventual 70 (roster) is incredibly important because you don’t know what’s going to happen. Anybody is a player or two away from being in there. You’ve got to have a great feeling for what that player can do and the better trained up they are, and the more ready that they are consistently, you feel like you can play the things that you want to play.”

WEDNESDAYS INJURY REPORT