Captain Competition said Russell Wilson will get a look as the starter in Seattle. (Getty Images)

When the Seahawks selected Russell Wilson in the third round of the 2012 NFL Draft, it surprised a few people, mainly because Seattle went out and signed Matt Flynn this offseason.

But here's the thing about Wilson: if he were taller than six feet he'd have been an early first-round pick. His football skills are obvious and they were apparently on display during the Seahawks rookie mini-camp, when Wilson did enough for Pete Carroll to put him in the mix for the starting quarterback competition in 2012.

"He showed us enough," Carroll said, per Danny O'Neill of the Seattle Times. "He's in the competition."

Now, there's a necessary caveat here: Carroll usually has every position up for grabs. He's Captain Competition (Tarvaris was the leader in the clubhouse because he used the word compete the most) and it would be shocking if he ever named someone a starter in advance of any actual competition taking place.

In fact, Carroll said that it will take a "long time" to determine who's going to be the starter in 2012.

"It's going to take us a long time to do this," Carroll said. "It's going to be frustrating for [the media]. You're going to keep asking and want to know. I'll just going to be more patient than you can imagine as we go through this process, and we'll just figure it out when we do."

Tarvaris Jackson, Seattle's 2011 starter, is going to begin the offseason getting first-team repetitions. He earned that by virtue of his role last year. But it's hard to imagine a world where Matt Flynn doesn't end up starting for the Seahawks; he was their big offseason acquisition this year, and if they didn't at least find out what they invested in, well, it would seem pretty pointless to have thrown money at him.

Having said that, it's not like the investment in Charlie Whitehurst -- a trade followed by a contract extension -- ever made sense and it certainly didn't work out.

And Wilson isn't a typical rookie quarterback anyway. He's an extremely mature guy who's worked in two different offenses at two different colleges. He has all the tools to be a successful NFL quarterback, but his size is problematic because it requires some specialized offensive planning, mainly through rolling him out of the pocket in order to get him throwing lanes that aren't always available to him if he simply sits back in the pocket.

But if Wilson plays well enough to earn the starting job, the Seahawks won't be sweating over anything as easy to pull off as a bootleg.

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