Bruce Irvin returned to practice this week for the Seattle Seahawks after serving a four-game suspension for a violation of the league’s performance-enhancing drugs policy. However, Seattle still needed to add him to their 53-man roster in order for him to play Sunday against the Indianapolis Colts.
The Seahawks took that step Saturday and activated Irvin to their roster. To make room, the team released receiver Stephen Williams.
The league had granted Seattle a one-week roster exemption for Irvin to allow them to carry 54 players this week. The team could have elected to leave Irvin on the exempt list through the weekend if they felt he wasn’t ready to play on just a week’s worth of practice after being away from the team for a month.
Seattle didn’t feel that was necessary and head coach Pete Carroll said Friday they are looking forward to seeing Irvin get on the field this week in his new role as a linebacker.
“He’s done really well,” Carroll said. “There’s just a little rough around the edges on some stuff but he’s in great shape and he’s ready to go and he’s really charged up and he’s done a lot of studying over the time that he was out of here and has come back ready to take advantage of this. He doesn’t want to wait another game or something to get going. We’d like to play him this week.”
Irvin led all rookies last season with eight sacks as a rotational defensive end. Seattle elected to move him to linebacker this offseason.
Williams had been among the standouts in training camp for Seattle but had not managed to catch a pass in the team’s first four games of the season.
