Coach Mike Macdonald provides details on other injured Seahawks star

If you’re a Seahawks fan (or 49ers fan, or fan of the NFL in general), you’ve probably got most of your attention taken up by the Sam Darnold situation. With good reason, given how much his potential injury looms over the divisional round of the postseason. Darnold is among the most important players in this game, on either side, and his oblique situation was surprising.

But Darnold wasn’t the only Seahawk to provide an injury scare during this last week. In fact, there were a handful of surprising injury report appearances, so much so that some Seahawks fans wondered what exactly the team was up to during the bye week. Demarcus Lawrence and Tariq Woolen made early cameos as limited participants before ultimately being cleared.

But until yesterday’s Darnold fiasco, the biggest scare came from Charles Cross, the starting left tackle and recent recipient of a nine figure contract extension that makes him among the highest paid offensive linemen in the sport. Cross had missed the last three games with a hamstring injury, but all indications were that he was on track to be back for the first playoff game.

He got a full day of practice in on Tuesday, lending credence to that belief, but then was surprisingly downgraded to limited on Wednesday, with a new injury listed. On top of the hamstring he was coming back from, he was now working with a knee injury, and a lack of context from the team had some fans concerned about what might have happened.

The concern was largely eased yesterday, when the final injury report indicated that Cross was a full participant yet again and gave him no game status. But today, Mike Macdonald explained that the knee injury was a new occurrence that happened in practice, so the concern was justified. However, he emphasized the missed practice time was precautionary.

Per Jessamyn McIntyre, Cross got tangled up in practice, which sounds like a pretty scary situation for a player just returning from a non-trivial injury to find themselves in. But fortunately, by all accounts, disaster was averted and there’s every reason to believe Cross is ready to go. Which is good, since his backup, Josh Jones, was ruled out with his own knee injury.

Precautionary has been the word of the week for the Seahawks, as they had several players miss portions of practice this week only to be given the unquestioned green light to play. So much so, that some have wondered if gamesmanship might be part of the motivation for listing what seem to be fairly minor injuries. It wouldn’t be a surprise if it were the case.

But with just over 24 hours to go before kickoff, it looks like the Seahawks will have a very close to fully healthy squad.

He's ready to go. — Seattle Seahawks tackle Charles Cross (67) against the Arizona Cardinals. | Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images

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