With Geno Smith coming off of a knee injury, the Seattle Seahawks have added insurance at quarterback on their active roster heading into Sunday's key home matchup with the Minnesota Vikings.
After being elevated from the practice squad and not dressing for a pair of games earlier this month, Seattle promoted second-year quarterback Jaren Hall to the 53-man roster, paving the way for him to be utilized as an emergency third quarterback on game day. In a corresponding move, the team placed outside linebacker Trevis Gipson on injured reserve with an ankle injury.
Joining the Seahawks after being waived by the Vikings at the end of August, Hall has impressed coach Mike Macdonald and the rest of the coaching staff with his work helping prepare the starting defense as a scout team quarterback. As a reward for those efforts, he received two game day elevations even though the team didn't plan on dressing him with Smith and Sam Howell serving as the two primary quarterbacks.
Per league rules, Hall wasn't eligible to be an emergency quarterback coming up from the practice squad. But with him now being on the active roster, even if the team initially lists him as one of their inactives, if Smith and Howell both were to go down with injuries in the same game, he would be able to play.
"I love the guy," Macdonald said of Hall on Wednesday. "We're always sitting back there during practice and hearing what he sees and scout team, the things that we're working out throughout each week, how he sees it. And he does a pretty good job at kind of diagnosing what's sound in our game plan and what makes it hard on offenses.
"This guy's just really smart and then we'd get some reps with the backups later on in practice and he's a great competitor and does a great job when he's given the opportunity with the guys out there."
The Seahawks traded a sixth-round pick to the Jaguars for Gipson at the start of the season with starter Uchenna Nwosu recovering from a sprained knee. The former Tulsa standout suited up for the first five regular season games, but did not produce any statistics and has been a healthy scratch in each of the past nine games before injuring his ankle in practice.
In an additional roster move, the Seahawks elevated cornerback Artie Burns from the practice squad to be eligible to play on Sunday afternoon. The veteran defender played in a Week 6 loss to the 49ers, producing a pair of pass breakups, before re-aggravating a toe injury from training camp and landing on injured reserve for six weeks.
