Russell Okung will have missed six weeks by the time this Sunday’s game has come and gone. Chester Pitts will likely miss this week, which means he hasn’t played since October of last season. These were injuries that the Seahawks front office knew about when assembling the 53-man roster, but chose to take the optimistic approach by keeping both players off the PUP list.
The PUP list, you may remember, allows a team to keep a player on the roster without counting against the 53-man limit. The cost is that the player cannot play until after week 6. Since the Seahawks have a bye in week 5, that would mean the player misses 5 games.
The risk of not PUP’ing Chester Pitts is that injuries on the offensive line can really take their toll if he is healthy enough to play for the majority of those first six weeks. That’s what is playing out this week as Max Unger won’t be able to play. Mansfield Wrotto has supposedly been re-signed, but that will take someone’s roster spot. We can’t be sure that Wrotto would have been the team’s first choice at fill-in guard. Steve Vallos was snatched up by Cleveland.
This front office has moved to its own beat thus far, which I love. Pete Carrol’s energy and optimism are authentic by all accounts. The thing to watch out for is that optimism clouding Carroll’s ability to make good roster choices. Wanting Chester Pitts to be ready is not the same thing as Chester Pitt’s being ready.