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Danny O'Neil covers the Seahawks for The Seattle Times.

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September 13, 2008 11:57 AM

Seahawks promote Bumpus, release Parker

Seattle announced it has moved wide receiver Michael Bumpus from the practice squad to the 53-man roster in time for him to play in Sunday's game. To make room for Bumpus, the Seahawks released Samie Parker, who was signed earlier this week.

The promotion of Bumpus is not a surprise. That had been mentioned as a possibility since the beginning of the week. The surprise comes from who was released to make room for Bumpus. Most people expected one of the kickers would be going. Nope. Instead, it's Parker, the wide receiver Seattle brought into the team on Wednesday.

There's a couple of things that signifies:

1) Seattle is pretty certain that rookie kicker Brandon Coutu is going to get gobbled up by someone on the waiver wire. They released Justin Forsett -- a future prospect -- instead of Coutu earlier this week and will head into Sunday's game with two kickers on the roster once again.

2) The Seahawks either expect the stockpile at wide receiver to improve before Parker had a chance to get up to speed on the offense and contribute or Parker's total lack of experience with Seattle's offense and terminology was just too prohibitive. The release of Parker does show the Seahawks aren't quite as desperate at wide receiver as some have imagined and they believe they have enough bodies to fill the position for the next two games.

12:36 p.m.: Dirk pointed out the punt-return ability of Michael Bumpus being a factor in the promotion. And he did say he has fielded punts in practice this week, and perhaps that's who Seattle will turn to return punts on Sunday. But coach Mike Holmgren has not said who'll return punts yet, and I'm not expecting that to be Bumpus. No, I qualify that by saying this is merely my observation and is based on a day in training camp now more than a month ago when Bumpus repeatedly struggled to catch punts to the point that at one point Holmgren made a comment. Again, that was a long time ago. A lot has happened, and Bumpus has certainly earned the faith of the coaching staff with his play, but I will be surprised if he's on the field to return punts.

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