• Seahawks trade for quarterback Charlie Whitehurst
By Danny O'Neil, The Seattle Times

Update: ESPN has reported contract details. It's a two-year, $8 million contract with Whitehurst with an additional $2 million in incentives.

• Seahawks complete swap with San Diego
By John Clayton and Adam Schefter, ESPN

Now, I'm not an NFL talent evaluator. I don't play one on TV. I didn't even stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night, which leaves me definitively underqualified to state whether Seattle gave up too much to acquire Charlie Whitehurst, whose most extensive body of work came in college at Clemson.

Seattle has decided Whitehurst can play. The Seahawks made that clear with the contract they offered him and the compensation they gave San Diego to acquire him. An accurate measurement of the decision will be made two years from now when we will know if Whitehurst will be mentioned alongside Matt Hasselbeck as a starter Seattle fished out of the backwaters of another team's depth chart or if Whitehurst is included in the list of quarterback errors for a franchise that drafted Dan McGwire and traded for Kelly Stouffer.

Whitehurst is a year older than Derek Anderson, who has a Pro Bowl on his résumé.

Whitehurst is two years older than Brady Quinn, who just three years ago was chosen in the first round of the NFL Draft.

But while Whitehurst has an edge in age, he trails significantly in one category: experience. That didn't hurt Whitehurst this offseason. It may have even helped him because his veneer of hope is unblemished. He is a blank slate.

That's what makes Seattle's pending acquisition tough to analyze. No one knows exactly what it is the Seahawks got. Well, the Chargers do since he played there the past four years. The fact he stuck around for the balance of his contract shows he wasn't a total dud like some third-round picks (cough, cough -- David Greene -- cough, cough). The fact Whitehurst stayed third on the depth chart says he was hardly lights out in the eyes of the Chargers coaching staff, either.

Now Whitehurst comes to Seattle with all the hope of a Christmas morning. At least that's how the new regime of coach Pete Carroll and general manager John Schneider see it.

The Seahawks believe Whitehurst fits the offense they will run under coordinator Jeremy Bates. He's big at 6 feet 4, relatively mobile and he hasn't done anything in a regular-season game to disprove San Diego's draft-day decision to choose him in the third round in 2006.

Of course, he hasn't done anything to validate being chosen that high, either. Well, not unless you count the 14-yard scramble for a touchdown in the second regular-season game since he entered the league. He hasn't scored since. Heck, he hasn't thrown a pass in a game that counts.

But he's untainted by failure, and that apparently was more important in this case.

Quinn was a known entity. His draft-day slide to the second half of the first round three years ago showed his pro prospects weren't as golden as some forecast. He started 12 games in three years, and when Cleveland decided to jettison him, it got a fullback, a sixth-round pick this season and a conditional choice next year.

Anderson threw 29 touchdown passes in 2007, he went to the Pro Bowl, but he ended up less desirable in Seattle's eyes than Whitehurst, who hasn't attempted a regular-season pass.

Other quarterbacks available this offseason had shown their flaws on the field, their shortcomings. Whitehurst hasn't. Perhaps that's because he hasn't played or maybe it's because he hasn't gotten the chance. Whitehurst hasn't proven he's unfit to be a starting quarterback in this league so let's just see if he can be.

It's an approach an alchemist would love. You don't know until you try, but in this case trying meant millions of dollars in addition to draft-day compensation.

Was it worth it? We'll know in two years. For now, we have the first real yardstick to measure the Seahawks' new administration. They've staked quite a bit on the belief Whitehurst can play.