Russell Wilson’s favorite target took a step closer to returning to the lineup for the Seattle Seahawks on Wednesday.
Wide receiver Doug Baldwin was a limited participant in practice on Wednesday. Baldwin missed the last two weeks of work following an MCL injury sustained in the team’s season opener against the Denver Broncos.
“It’s a great step and jump for him to make,” head coach Pete Carroll said. “He was in the walkthrough today, he’ll practice for the first time in a few weeks and he looks really good and light on his feet and he’s very confident that he can have a chance to play this week so we’ll see how it goes. He’s confident. That’s not a surprise. We’ve got to see if he can pull it off.”
Baldwin was injured when Broncos defensive tackle Domata Peko rolled up on the back of his right leg on a play in the first half of Seattle’s season opening loss. He tried to come back in the game briefly before being sidelined the rest of the afternoon. Carroll wasn’t sure yet if Baldwin had a chance to play this week against the Arizona Cardinals.
“I’ve got to see him,” he said. “He hasn’t practiced going full speed yet so we’ll find out. But I’m really hopeful he can do that. He’s really determined. It’s been a frustrating process for him and he’s dying to get back out there so hopefully he can pull that together.”
Baldwin missed most of training camp and all four of the team’s preseason games due to an issue in his left knee. He sat out around 3-4 weeks of practices before getting back up to speed and ready for the start of the season. Then the injury to his right knee knocked him out of the first game of the year. Carroll said it will take time to figure out how to manage Baldwin’s health given issues for both of knees at the beginning of the year.
“We’ll work our way through it and we’ll just assess how he’s doing and how it’s going,” Carroll said. “It’s a little bit unknown how it’s going to feel after a day’s work right now, and then the next day and put a game under our belt, then we’ll go to the next week. We’ll figure it out how is he by Wednesday. We don’t know that stuff yet. We’re going to take it one step at a time.”
Baldwin has caught 247 passes for 3,188 yards and 29 touchdowns over the last three seasons for Seattle.
