Jadeveon Clowney, DK Metcalf debut Sunday. Why Ziggy Ansah, Mike Iupati are questionable
The Seahawks are all set for Jadeveon Clowney and DK Metcalf to debut for them.
Ziggy Ansah and Mike Iupati are questionable, though recent team trends say they will play Sunday in the opener against Cincinnati at CenturyLink Field.
Rookie first-round draft choice L.J. Collier will have to wait.
Seattle’s first game injury report of the new season Friday shows Collier is out for Sunday. The defensive end said Thursday “we are on the way back.” That looks like it will mean, after another week of fuller practicing, Collier will debut in next week’s game at Pittsburgh.
“I would think that next week he’d be competing to play,” coach Pete Carroll said following a walk-through practice.
Ansah was not on the first injury report the team issued and sent to the NFL Friday. Later in the afternoon the team changed him to questionable, after Carroll said the team’s medical staff wants to see how Ansah will respond Saturday and Sunday to his first practices this week in nine months.
“There’s still a bit of a question mark,” Carroll said. “We just got to make sure on game day that everything worked out OK because they’re still responding to the workload. There’s still a little bit of question for Ziggy.
“We just want to make sure he’s all right.”
Iupati is questionable. But he practiced fully Friday for the first time since late July. He said he got eight snaps in team drills.
He missed almost all of training camp and each of the four preseason games because of a sprained foot and then strained calf. Ethan Pocic is prepared to start for Iupati Sunday, though that would create depth problems at guard.
Reserve guard Jordan Simmons is on injured reserve. Rookie fourth-round draft choice Phil Haynes is missing at least the first six games while on the physically-unable-to-perform list.
“Ethan’s done a hell of a job,” Iupati said. “All respect to him.”
Iupati said he is healthy enough to be in uniform and available Sunday.
The team’s statistical trend on injury reports says Iupati is going to be active to play in Sunday’s game.
Questionable is officially, per the NFL injury-report guidelines, a 50-50 chance of playing. But the numbers have been better than that for Seattle. Last year the Seahawks listed players as questionable 43 times before games. In 29 of those cases the questionable guy played. That’s 67.4 percent of the time.
In 2017, Seattle listed players as questionable 53 times. That player participated in that week’s game 42 times, 79 percent of the time.
Clowney and Metcalf aren’t even listed on the game injury report. They are playing.
Clowney, acquired last weekend in a trade, had been listed as limited in his first two practices in 8 1/2 months following a contract holdout with Houston before he got traded.
Ansah, Clowney’s new Seahawks bookend edge pass rusher, completed his sixth practice in nine months on Friday. The 30-year-old defensive end is coming back from season-ending shoulder surgery in December while he was with Detroit, before the Seahawks signed him in May.
Clowney and (apparently) Ansah are going to be limited in their playing time in their first game back. Coach Pete Carroll refuses to say how much they’ll be limited. But as a point of reference, Ansah has not averaged as many as 31 snaps per game since 2015 with the Lions. And that includes when he’s not been coming off injury. About 20 snaps may be a reasonable expectation for him on Sunday.
Metcalf will play 19 days after the rookie wide receiver had knee surgery.
“I’m 100 percent,” Metcalf said Thursday.
Carroll has called Metcalf’s a “fantastic recovery.”
The second-round pick is likely to start as Seattle’s split end or “X” wide receiver. His mother and father are flying across the country to see his NFL debut. It’s their first time attending an NFL game since 2008, his dad Terrence’s last season as an offensive lineman for the Chicago Bears.
Marquise Blair will also play. The Seahawks’ other rookie second-round pick missed much of the preseason his a hip pointer. But the safety was full go in practices this week, and is also not listed on the injury report for Sunday’s game.
Blair is likely to play special teams and be the backup to the starting safety pairing of Tedric Thompson and Bradley McDougald.
This story was originally published September 6, 2019 at 1:40 PM with the headline "Jadeveon Clowney, DK Metcalf debut Sunday. Why Ziggy Ansah, Mike Iupati are questionable."
