By Rob Staton
Golden Tate has been lighting it up during training camp, earning rave reviews from all quarters. The rookie receiver is quite prominent on twitter (@showtimetate) and he’s now started a blog called Play Maker Tate. His first entry asks how he can ‘engage’ the 12th man and gives us an insight into what his life since the April draft (including donut-gate). It’s worth a read and offers a unique connection to one of the Seahawks’ best young prospects.
I love the new site. thanks to you Rob, I am both hoping that the hawks do well this season, but I also want them to get a high draft pick. which feels like an oxy moron. I think that what I want the most is for Locker to fall to us in the bottom of round one because every other team in the NFL is dumb. (Fingers crossed)
Hey Tom, thanks for the feedback. I understand how you feel – the Seahawks are still in the midst of a pretty big rebuild but we don’t want to suffer years of losing to initiate the changes. I’m a big fan of Matt Hasselbeck and I’m confident he’ll have a really good year in 2010. However, now is the time to find the ‘heir apparent’ and not when the position is vacant. Maybe Charlie Whitehurst will impress enough to win that role, we’ll see.
Locker has a lot of work to do in 2010 to justify the hype but I understand he has a great chance to go first overall in 2011. It’d be a great story if he ended his career at Washington on a high and then began his NFL years in Seattle. However, it’s important to understand romance and reality and at the end of the day, Locker has a 1-in-32 chance of landing in Seattle. This could be a good year for QB’s if the likes of Luck, Mallett, Ponder, Johnson, Pryor, Foles etc perform to a high standard. But Seattle have areas they can improve besides QB – namely the defensive line. I am also a huge fan of Rodney Hudson (OG, Florida). I can’t praise him enough. If Seattle are ‘too good’ (let’s hope) for the top QB sweepstakes, then getting Hudson in the later first would be an excellent consolation prize and long term partner for Russell Okung.