The Seahawks just announced that defensive tackle Marcus Tubbs, recovering from microfracture surgery of his knee, has been placed on the physically unable to perform list. What it means is he probably hasn’t yet passed the physical to be in action at the start of training camp (Sunday morning).

Although the thought during minicamps was that Tubbs would be recovered by the start of camp, this doesn’t automatically signal disaster. Those on the PUP list can’t practice with the team, but they can attend meetings and rehab. They can be brought onto the roster at any time. However, if players are still on the PUP list at the time of the final cutdown date (Sept. 1), they must sit out the first six weeks of the regular season.

The first-round draft pick in 2004, Tubbs is considered critical to bolstering the Seahawk rush defense that had so many problems last season. When spotted rehabbing during minicamps, Tubbs looked extremely fit and powerful … better, in fact, than at any time since he arrived in Seattle.

The range of possible implications is so broad, and we won’t know where this falls until we see him on Sunday and hear Mike Holmgren’s evaluation. Maybe this is a matter of caution with a key player who has had injury issues. It might mean only a few days missed. On the other end of it, if Tubbs can’t return to playing shape in time for the regular season, the nature of the entire defense changes to some extent. If you can’t stop the run up the middle, the pressure that puts on the other layers of defense is enormous.

I'd also argue there's at least a measure of psychological impact, too, if Tubbs misses much time. For a team that dealt with so many injury issues in 2006, there could be a hint of "here we go again" if a key player is sidelined from the start. But, as they say on the television broadcasts when a player is getting carted off the field: "we don't want to speculate prematurely."

The Seahawks announced a couple of roster moves today. The release:

Seahawks Release One, Sign One

Kirkland, Wash. – The Seattle Seahawks have released linebacker Marquis Cooper and signed kicker Kurt Smith, the team announced this afternoon.

Cooper, who attended the University of Washington, signed to Seattle’s active roster from its practice squad on December 12, 2006 and played in one regular season game and one postseason game.

Smith is an undrafted rookie free agent from the University of Virginia.

The start of camp brings us the need to use this space for news and analysis. But there’s still a little time for the kind of philosophical discussions that you seem to enjoy on occasion. Some of our best participation has been when you’re telling me something rather than the other way around, so I want to toss out one suggested by Greg from Tennessee. He wants to know how everybody out there caught the same bug. How did you become Seahawks fans? You’ve arrived at the same place, but surely through different routes. What happened?

Was it a player, a game, a season, an experience? Was it just a matter of geography? This was where you lived so you adopted the team out of convenience? What lit the spark? What caused it to grow?

An example: In my job, I don’t get to embrace a team. But I love the sport. My older brothers played football, and I idolized them, so I wanted to play football. At times when I was a kid, my dad got us tickets for Bears games. I remember freezing my scrawny little fanny off at Wrigley and, in the days before the end zone nets, racing in among a mob of muscular mill-workers and hog-butchers to try to retrieve a ball after a field goal or extra point. I’d come out of there missing my hat, coat ripped, bruised … and I never got close to getting a ball. But one moment more than others sucked me into the game: The “Johnny Unitas” championship game, the sudden death win by the Colts over the Giants on Dec. 28, 1958. I was 7, and my dad, two brothers and I watched it on a television that was the size of a refrigerator but had a screen about 8 inches across. The figures were tiny shadows in shades of gray, but the brilliance of Unitas was such that it absolutely reached out of that little screen and grabbed hold of me. It’s never let go. On a corkboard to my left, as I type, I see a brilliant Robert Riger picture from that game, with Unitas about to pass, left arm out in front of him like he’s sighting in his target. Bodies are flying and falling around him, but he’s anchored there in frozen perfection. Just beautiful.

Tell us what got to you. Thanks.