Training Camp Watch: The Offensive Line

Seems like the key to getting the Hawks back to the dominant team they were in 2005 is better play from the O-Line, so I'll be following mostly that when I'm looking at the training camp roundups from the papers. So, though you'll get a heavy dose of unsexy O-Line talk, you'll also have no better sense of who's competing for spots.

Back in May, TNT's Mike Sando wrote that the projected starters were these:

RT--Sean Locklear, RG--Chris Gray, C--Chris Spencer, LG--Rob Sims, LT--Walter Jones.

Backups: Ray Willis, Floyd Womack, Tom Ashworth, Mansfield Wrotto.

Sando said that the whole right side of the line is up for grabs. Chris Spencer stepped in last year after now-retired Robbie Tobeck got hurt, and I got the sense that the team expected more out of him. And of course he made that late botched-snap in the Bears game. Hopefully the experience that he and Rob Sims got will help this year. It will be interesting to watch, and I'll be watching.

On today's first day, the weather was crappy, something the Hawks will have to expect now that they're on this side of the mountains. Cheney was reliably really hot, but also reliably dry. Western Washington, not so much. Walking off the field, Mike Holmgren stopped to talked to reporters: "'I have no comment on the weather,' he said, flashing a look that clearly was not thrilled," reports TNT's Dave Boling.

Boling reports that Ashworth and Spencer didn't participate in one-on-one blocking drills, but gives no reason why.

The Times' Danny O'Neil writes that Womack, who started '06 as the starting left guard but lost his spot when he got hurt, didn't make the afternoon practice, presumably due to pain in his knees (he had arthroscopic surgery on both knees in the offseason).

O'Neil also says that Ray Willis is getting reps at right guard, where the team thinks he could challenge Chris Gray for the starting spot. Tom Ashworth, who disappointed last year after coming over as a free agent from New England, is getting reps at right tackle, he's Sean Locklear's backup.

In afternoon practice, Dave Boling reports that rookie draftee Mansfield Wrotto got badly beat by Marcus Green (a DT who played two games last year), but that Wrotto controlled Green on the next play.