Seahawks lunchtime links

… Or, if you stayed up for all 18 innings of last night’s Mariners game, then maybe these are morning links to you.

Anyway, for those who were waiting for updates from Pete Carroll’s usual Wednesday press conference, well, you’re going to be waiting a while. Since the Seahawks play on Monday Night Football, their schedule is pushed back a day, so no news coming from Seahawks headquarters today.

Instead, here’s a bit of reading to get you through your afternoon.

First, from today’s Herald, my column looking at the rise of the NFC West, which not so long ago was the laughingstock of the NFL, but is now looking like one of the toughest, and maybe best (way too early to say) divisions in the league.

Sports Illustrated’s Don Banks, who was in Seattle for the Seahawks-Cowboys game, addressed the same topic, saying, “The NFC West is not inspiring much humor these days. Rather respect.”

Over at the Tacoma News Tribune, columnist Dave Boling takes a look at the Seahawks defense and wonders if it may end up being the best in franchise history.

And on ESPN.com, the current cover story on their homepage is this feature on quarterback Russell Wilson. Don’t be surprised to see more Seahawks coverage than usual over at ESPN. They are, after all, the network with the rights to Monday Night Football, so they’ll do what they can to drum up as much interest as they can in the week leading up to the game.

Speaking of Russell Wilson, the Seahawks quarterback landed himself a Levis commercial already, and as far as commercials go, it’s pretty interesting.

And finally, though this isn’t a Seahawks story, per se, but Brian Banks, the former high school star who was wrongly convicted of rape and spent more than five years in prison before being recently exonerated, landed a job with the Las Vegas Locomotives of the United Football League. Banks had tryouts with several NFL team, including the Seahawks—Pete Carroll recruited Banks before his arrest—this offseason not long after his release.