We met with the officials at 1:30, and they went over some of the rules changes for the upcoming season. The most prominent is the force-out rule, and if a player does not get his feet down and is forced out of bounds it is now an incomplete pass. The caveat to that is if he is clearly going to come down but a player carries him out. The force-out happens far less often than you would guess, the referee who sat with us, Pete Morelli, saying about 14 times last season.

Other rules changes:

* There are no 5-yard facemasks any more. Only 15-yard intentional facemask penalties.

* A direct snap from center to QB that is not touched is now a live ball. It used to be dead if it was not touched.

* All muffed handoffs are now live balls.

* An offensive player (Marion Barber) can no longer grab a defensive player's facemask or it is a 15-yard penalty.

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* Defensive players can now wear speakers in their helmets. Apparently, Lofa Tatupu does not want to be the player to wear the speaker, and Brian Russell does not either, so it sounds like Deon Grant may be that player. We caught him for a few minutes after practice but he said he didn't know anything about it. He doesn't know if it would help or hurt, he doesn't know who he would be speaking with and he doesn't know what information would be coming across. One problem, though, is that Qwest gets so loud when the Hawks are on defense that he may not be able to hear it anyway.

As for the afternoon practice, it was a special teams session, which led to discussions about Rock Em Sock Em Robots, Operation, Stratomatic football and Hungry Hungry Hippos. If you don't know what those are, you are either very young or very old.

Bruce DeHaven had the fellas working on punt coverage, punt returns as well as doing a drill practicing blocking punts. He got on Justin Forsett once for not getting away from a ball on a punt return. Forsett, Obomanu and Burleson were back returning. Courtney Taylor was on a side field working out and my guess it that he is back soon after tomorrow's scrimmage.

By the way, Bob LaMonte, who represents both Mike Holmgren and Jim Mora, attended the practice.