While the Seahawks lost one safety to injury for the remainder of the season, placing Tedric Thompson on injured reserve Wednesday, the news is positive on another starting safety, Bradley McDougald.
McDougald missed Seattle's Week 7 game with back spasms, then was active last week but only as an emergency backup. This week, McDougald is on track to make a full return, Seahawks coach Pete Carroll said.
"Bradley is ready to go," Carroll said. "He's full speed."
McDougald returning to health comes at a good time for Seattle. In addition to Thompson going on injured reserve, safety Lano Hill is still making his way back from an elbow injury and is not expected to be back this week, Carroll said. Recently acquired safety Quandre Diggs, who has a hamstring injury, is a "longshot" to play this week.
"I'm going to go with him all the way until the weekend here," Carroll said of Diggs. "We've got to get him out to the practice field before we can give him a chance. It's going to be a longshot for him to make it this week."
As for Thompson's shoulder injury, Carroll said the third-year free safety needs surgery to repair an injured labrum.
"He needs labrum surgery," Carroll said. "He's had a shoulder that's been bothering him for some time. We're going to get him fixed up… He's been really toughing it out for a good while. We're going to miss him. He's been an integral part of our stuff. A really good teammate. We love the guy and we hate that he's not going to get to play, but we've got to fix him up."
Sticking with the secondary, the Seahawks are hoping to get Tre Flowers back after the starting right cornerback missed last week's game with a neck injury.
"He's practicing today," Carroll said. "We need to see how he responds to the week. Counting on him being ready to go."
On the other side of the ball, the Seahawks are getting Ed Dickson back to practice this week, as the tight end was designated to return from injured reserve. Dickson has not yet been added to the 53-man roster, and the Seahawks can keep him on the practice field without making a move for up to three weeks, but the hope is he'll be game-ready sooner than that.
"We just need to break him in and see where he is," Carroll said. "He was in good enough shape and had returned well enough that we were able to really push him the last three weeks to see if we could get him up to the work level that it would take to be ready so he can just move in and transition smoothly. We'll find out. We've watched him and all that. He's pushing bags and trainers around and stuff like that. It's going to be a little bit different."
