The Seattle Seahawks selected two tackles in this year’s NFL draft to beef up the offensive line – Charles Cross on the left side and Abe Lucas on the right. Both impressed coach Pete Carroll in the team’s first preseason contest this summer.
“If you guys do go back and look at the film, we ran a lot of stuff at Charles,” Carroll told reporters after Tuesday’s practice. “He did a lot of front-side stuff, and he did really well. He commanded his block on almost every play in the running game. What was really exciting was to see Abe on the backside, Abe had some dominant blocks on the backside. I think he had three takedowns and blasted the linebacker coming up on the second level, which was really nice. It was really good stuff, but it was not different than what we’ve seen.
“That’s the cool thing, those guys practiced and played the same, so they were ready for the moment – they were ready for it and handled it really well.”
Both Charles and Lucas will get two more chances to strut their stuff this summer – the Seahawks’ preseason home game against the Bears Thursday night and the following week against the Cowboys.
“I’m really fired up about this week and next week, these are two enormous opportunities for these guys to just gain confidence, settle in, get with the cadence, and all of the stuff that they have to do,” Carroll said. “They will see different style of players, so they need all of that, but it was a really, really good first impression. I’ll tell you again, it’s not anything different than the impressions they made in practice.
“The work that we have been giving them has worked out quite well.”
The Seahawks and Bears are set to kick off Thursday evening at 5:00 p.m. PT.
