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A flurry of recent activity has pumped up roster counts around the NFC West.

The Seattle Seahawks added guard Deuce Lutui, linebacker Barrett Ruud and cornerback Roy Lewis. The Arizona Cardinals added safety James Sanders. The St. Louis Rams signed defensive end William Hayes. The San Francisco 49ers welcomed back receiver Brett Swain while announcing an earlier agreement with running back Brandon Jacobs.

Teams will continue supplementing their rosters heading into the draft and training camps.

With that in mind, I've put together two charts. The first one shows current roster counts. The second one shows where rosters stood at the 80-man limits on Sept. 2, 2011 -- offering a point of reference.



We can compare current roster counts (above) with 80-man counts from last September (below) to see where NFC West teams are short on players.

• Seattle: The Seahawks have more room for receivers and defensive linemen than for other positions. They have the most signed players of any team in the division.
• San Francisco: The 49ers have five fewer defensive backs than they had in September, but they were carrying an unusually large number at the time. Linebacker is a position where they could use numbers.
• Arizona: Offensive line and linebacker are the positions where the Cardinals have the most room, with defensive line next on the list.
• St. Louis: The Rams have the most room of any team in the division, both overall and at defensive line, linebacker and receiver.

Teams will add players through the draft before signing undrafted free agents. While veteran free agency has slowed for most teams, the Rams keep bringing in players for tryouts and visits. They have 21 roster spots to fill, most in the division.

I have arranged the first chart by which teams have the most players at present. The second chart lists teams in the same order for easier comparison. Teams will also release some of their current players, making the comparisons only general.

INDIANAPOLIS -- Jim Thomas' latest St. Louis Rams piece for the Post-Dispatch mentioned a general desire to add bulk, particularly on the offensive line.

This sent me through the rosters I maintain for every team in the league.

Sure enough, the Rams' offensive linemen averaged 306 pounds, the 26th-highest figure in the league.

Teams do not always provide accurate weights for their players. I update weights periodically; some of the ones in my spreadsheet surely need tweaking. The 306-pound average for the Rams stands as a rough estimate.

The fact that the Rams would rank in the bottom half of the league gives us at least a general indication of where they stand in overall bulk up front.

The top offensive tackle in the draft, USC's Matt Kalil, is listed at only 295 pounds. But at 6-foot-7, he has potential to add quite a bit of weight. I'd be surprised if he weighed beneath 300 pounds by the time he began his pro career.

The St. Louis Rams currently have as many players left over from their 2009 regular-season finale as the NFC West-champion San Francisco 49ers.

I would expect that to change in a big way now that the Rams have a new coaching staff, new general manager and new overall direction. Even their majority ownership has changed since 2009.

They might not overhaul their roster the way Seattle has done; the Seahawks have a league-low 14 players from 2009 still with them. But change is coming to St. Louis.

The 26-column rosters I maintain allow for quick analysis by these and other parameters. They're available for download and contain information for every player to spend time on NFC West teams' rosters since about 2007. For example, sorting the Arizona Cardinals' roster by position will show the team's last 17 quarterbacks.

These rosters can be helpful as free agency gets going. I'll update them to show which players hit the market. The rosters do show when each current player's contract was scheduled to expire, to be updated as new information becomes available.

I'll be heading over to CenturyLink Field shortly to catch the Arizona Cardinals-St. Louis Rams game on TV before the Seattle Seahawks and Washington Redskins kick off later Sunday.

In the meantime, I've updated the NFC West rosters featuring 27 columns of information on every current and former (to about 2007) player. You can download those here.

The Rams have the third-oldest 53-man roster in the league heading into Week 12. The Cardinals rank sixth-oldest. The Seahawks have the third-youngest roster behind Tampa Bay and Carolina. San Francisco has the fifth-youngest, right behind Cleveland.

After 2009 first-rounder Jason Smith became the latest Rams draft choice to land on injured reserve, the Rams have only 12 of their own draft choices on their 53-man roster, fewest in the NFL by five players.

The 49ers are tied with Pittsburgh for the league high with 33 of their own draft choices on the 53-man roster, right ahead of Green Bay (32). The Seahawks have 18, tied for third-fewest. The Cardinals have 22, tied for 11th-fewest.

By my count, the Seahawks and Rams are tied with Carolina for the second-most draft choices on injured reserve, with eight apiece. Arizona and San Francisco have three apiece.

The Arizona Cardinals take a 1-6 record and the NFL's oldest roster into Week 8.

That's usually an undesirable combination even though the Cardinals' starters are younger on average. The team has the NFL's oldest defensive backups. The offensive backups are on the older side as well, thanks largely to an absence of young talent on the offensive line.

These are things to consider while checking out the latest 26-column rosters for NFC West teams.

The chart shows age rankings for NFC West rosters in various categories, based on the rosters I maintain for every team in the league.

In the past, I've ranked teams from oldest to youngest. This chart ranks them youngest to oldest. For example, the Seahawks went into Week 9 with the youngest starters in the league on average. The Rams' starters were 28th-youngest.

The Seattle Seahawks have the youngest starters in the NFL heading into Week 7. The Cleveland Browns have the second-youngest starters.

The NFL's oldest starters belong to the Arizona Cardinals' opponent Sunday: Pittsburgh.

Those were among the revelations as I updated NFL teams' rosters this weekend to make available for download the latest ones for the NFC West. These feature 26 columns of information for every current player in the division, plus former players from the past few seasons.

With the post-Mike Holmgren Seahawks visiting the Holmgren-built Browns this week, much has been made about how few players remain in Seattle from his 1999-2008 run with the team. I count five Holmgren-era draft choices on the 53-man roster: Justin Forsett, Brandon Mebane, Ben Obomanu, Red Bryant and Leroy Hill. All were drafted when Tim Ruskell was running the Seahawks' personnel department beginning in 2005.

The chart below shows how many of its own draft choices each NFC West team has on its 53-man roster, broken down by coach.

The NFC West buffet includes a wide variety of items.

The 26-column rosters, freshly updated and made available for download, aren't for everyone. If your stomach churns at the thought of an Excel spreadsheet, these aren't for you. But if you enjoy having lots of information available for your own purposes, these can be of pretty fair nutritional value.

A few age-related updates I've culled while comparing rosters across the NFL:

• The Arizona Cardinals have the oldest roster in the league by average age, right ahead of the Pittsburgh Steelers. Coach Ken Whisenhunt has sought to pattern the Cardinals after the Steelers, but age is working against both teams on defense in particular. Two former Steelers, Joey Porter and Clark Haggans, remain the best outside pass-rushers on the Cardinals' defense despite their advancing age.
• The Cardinals are older than most teams on the offensive line because they prefer veteran backups. They have the third-oldest offensive linemen in the league top to bottom; the Seattle Seahawks have the youngest. The San Francisco 49ers have the third-youngest.
• The St. Louis Rams are the fifth-oldest team overall and third-oldest when we exclude specialists. The Cardinals become the fifth-oldest team by this measure. I exclude specialists from most team age calculations because those players can often produce well into their 30s, unlike players at other positions. If you've got older players at kicker, punter and long-snapper, that doesn't mean you're an old team to the same degree as a team with young specialists and older position players.
• If you're going to be really bad, you might as well be really young at the same time. The Rams are old and bad right now, a potentially troubling development. But many of their older players are signed to one-year deals that give the Rams flexibility after the season. However, they lack sufficient young prospects at some positions, including linebacker and running back.
• The Seattle Seahawks are second-youngest with specialists and third-youngest without them. The 49ers are among the 10 youngest by either measure.
• The Seahawks now have the youngest starters in the league. Starters for the Rams are fifth-oldest. Starters for the Cardinals and 49ers are nearer the middle of the pack.

What does it all mean? The Rams and Cardinals have spent big on quarterbacks and surrounded them with quite a few veteran players. The Seahawks and 49ers have gone younger, and both could be in position for long-term growth if they can solve their quarterback situations for the future.

Players on practice squads get very little public attention during the season, but teams sometimes rely on them heavily for depth during the week.

NFC West teams are carrying the maximum eight-man allotments heading into Week 4. My updated 26-column rosters, available for download here, feature players on practice squads and active rosters, plus former players and those on reserve lists.

The charts below break down positional counts for 53-man rosters and practice squads.

The St. Louis Rams have only seven offensive linemen on their 53-man roster, but with three more on the practice squad, they're able to function during the week.

The Seattle Seahawks have only two tight ends on their active roster, but they have three available to them for practice, plus Cameron Morrah, who remains on the physically unable to perform list, and John Carlson, who is on injured reserve. Former tight end Jamison Konz, now one of two defensive linemen on the practice squad, helps numbers at his current position.

A few notes on practice squad players, straight from the collective bargaining agreement:

• Practice squads are limited to eight players at a time.
• Players on practice squads are eligible to sign with any team's 53-man roster, but they cannot sign with their current team's next opponent later than 4 p.m. ET on the sixth day preceding the game (10th day during a bye week).
• Minimum salaries for players on practice squads are $5,700 per week in 2011 and 2012, escalating throughout the 10-year labor agreement. Salaries peak at $8,400 in 2020.
• Players are eligible for practice squads if they have zero accrued seasons, and when they spent fewer than nine regular-season games on an active roster in their lone accrued season.
• Players can spend two seasons on practice squads, with a season defined as three or more regular-season or postseason games. They can spend a third season on a practice squad, defined as one or more games, if their team keeps 53 players on its roster at all times.
• Any player signed from a practice squad to an active roster is guaranteed three weeks' salary at the 53-man level, even if he's released before spending that long on a roster. The player will count on the team's 53-man roster for three games, with a bye week counting as a game, unless the season ends first.

There are a few more specific rules, but these are the basics.

Bigger numbers for a position on a practice squad usually correspond with smaller numbers on the 53-man roster.

The 26-column NFC West team rosters featuring more than 1,800 current and former players have been updated to include new information from 2010.

We can now see which players were on Week 17 rosters as backups, starters or as players on injured reserve. This info lets us sum up roster turnover for teams in the division.

In a few cases, backups from Week 17 last season were actually starters resting injuries. That was the case for the San Francisco 49ers' Patrick Willis. Overall, though, the numbers paint an accurate general picture.

The Seahawks have undergone the highest turnover from last season. Twenty-six players on their current 53-man roster were not on the 53-man roster or injured reserve in Week 17 last season. They have a division-low 11 starters from Week 17 on their roster at present. The St. Louis Rams have a division-high 18.

Unfortunately for Seattle, a couple of their top new players likely will not help them Sunday. The team expects receiver Sidney Rice (shoulder) and left guard Robert Gallery (knee) to miss the regular-season opener at San Francisco.

With Gallery out, the Seahawks have only one projected starter age 30 or older: Marcus Trufant. The Rams have eight, the Arizona Cardinals have six and the 49ers have five if Madieu Williams replaces the injured Dashon Goldson at safety, as expected. With Goldson listed among backups, the 49ers have the third-youngest offensive and defensive non-starters in the league, while those for Arizona and St. Louis rank among the four oldest.

We'll call those older backups "veteran depth" if the Rams and Cardinals enjoy strong seasons.

The second chart, updated to reflect Seattle's move to sign Anthony Hargove at Landon Cohen's expense, shows NFC West roster counts based on where players went to college. Conference affiliations are current, not necessarily as they were when players were in college.

The Seahawks remain heavy on players from the West, specifically the Pac-12. The Cardinals take pride in developing players from the Division I-AA (FCS) ranks, including receiver Andre Roberts, quarterback John Skelton and tackle Brandon Keith.

The Seattle Seahawks have reveled in their roster activity since Pete Carroll took over as coach following the 2009 season.

"Carroll and general manager John Schneider made 284 roster transactions in 2010 and are continuing to shape a roster with bigger, faster, talented young players this season," the team's weekly in-season news release says. "Of the 53 players currently on the active roster for this week's game, only 10 were with the team in 2009."


This matches the information I've tracked for every NFL team. The Seahawks are not the only ones to have made a nearly complete makeover since 2009. Every NFC West team ranks among the NFL's top 10 in most new players since the final week of the 2009 regular season.

A few numbers within the numbers:

• Five players who started for Seattle in Week 17 of the 2009 season remain with the team. Cleveland (six), Buffalo (seven), Carolina (eight), Washington (eight) and New Orleans (eight) are the only other teams with fewer than 10. The Saints were an exception because they rested some starters in that final game.
• Seattle (five), Detroit (five), St. Louis (five) and Baltimore (six) have the fewest backups from 2009 Week 17 remaining on their rosters. Philadelphia (seven) and Washington (seven) were not far behind.
• The most consistently strong teams over the past few years naturally rank near the bottom in turnover. They've had good players, for the most part, and kept a lot of them.

The chart below breaks down the new players by team. By new players, I mean those who weren't on the 53-man roster or injured reserve in Week 17 of the 2009 season. These numbers are through Monday, plus a move or two from Tuesday, including David Garrard's release.

If NFC West teams are improving, they'll retain their coaches and turnover numbers should decline over time.

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The NFL's mandatory reduction to 53 players provides an opportunity to revisit team age rankings.

Every team has young players. Every coach can speak to youth at specific positions.

It'll be tough for the Arizona Cardinals or St. Louis Rams to blame any defensive struggles on overall youth, however. Both teams rank among the NFL's three oldest on defense, behind Pittsburgh, according to the rosters I maintain for every team in the league.

Arizona defenders Nick Eason, Darnell Dockett, Joey Porter, Clark Haggans, Paris Lenon and Adrian Wilson are all in their 30s, as are Rams defensive players Fred Robbins, James Hall, Justin Bannan, Ben Leber, Brady Poppinga and Quintin Mikell.

Seattle has three defenders in their 30s: Raheem Brock, Marcus Trufant and Junior Siavii. San Francisco has two: Justin Smith and Carlos Rogers.

The chart ranks teams by overall age, from oldest to youngest. I've also included rankings for defense, offense and specialists. Ages are calculated to the day, not just to the year. For example, the 49ers' Andy Lee and Adam Snyder are both 29, but Lee was born 193 days later. Those days count in the calculation.

The defending conference champs reside at opposite ends of the age spectrum, proving there's more than one way to build a championship-caliber team. I'd rather be young and bad than old and bad, however, given the potential for improvement.

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NFL teams have gone from 90 to 80 to 53 players since Tuesday.

I've updated the 26-column, roided-out rosters for NFC West teams and made them available for download in the usual Excel file.

League averages near the top of each sheet will be updated as well; I've updated rosters across the league based on moves teams announced Saturday.

Enjoy.
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NFC West teams must clear a combined 108 roster spots by Saturday at 6 p.m. ET.

In the meantime, I'll make available for download a new, improved Excel file featuring 26 columns of information for every current player in the division, plus hundreds more players no longer active with NFC West teams. The term "roided-out" reflects these rosters' impressive bulk, not their actual composition. Downloading a copy will not produce a positive test result, in other words.

These rosters will be familiar to longer-tenured visitors to the NFC West blog. I've made a few changes and will continue to make more. Among the features you might find useful:

• I've added a column showing when most players' contracts are known to end. Filtering this column to show a specific year helps formulate thoughts quickly regarding free agency, etc. The new labor agreement made this column easier to manage. Undrafted rookies now get three-year deals. Draft choices get four-year deals.
• Another column now shows how many starts players made last season. I had previously included this information for the 2007-09 seasons. We can now see the information for the 2009-10 seasons.
• College conference affiliations are now updated to reflect the Pacific-12 Conference and other reconfigured conferences. Seattle has 26 players from the Pac-12. San Francisco has 15. The league average is 9.7 even with the Seahawks' and 49ers' totals included. Teams' undrafted rookie classes tend to feature regional flavor. The Seahawks' and 49ers' coaches have Pac-10 roots, obviously, so that is a factor as well.
• Detailed age information helps provide a sense for how teams' rosters are comprised. You can filter for only "active" players, then sort any of the columns, including one for age, to your liking.
• A column for "transaction note" lets you quickly identify rookie free agents, players signed as unrestricted free agents from other teams ("U11" for this year), unrestricted free agents re-signed ("UR11" for this year), unrestricted free agents lost to other teams ("UL11" for this year) and more.

I'll leave you with a chart showing positional counts for NFC West teams heading toward the 53-man cutdown deadline.

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Updating the rosters I maintain for NFL teams becomes challenging this time of year, but I'm plowing through.

Consider the chart below for use as a baseline.

It shows team-by-team averages for age heading into the signing period. The averages affect players with contracts for 2011, plus restricted free agents, franchise players and rookie draft choices. The averages do not reflect veteran contract agreements or terminations that were pending heading into the day. Rookie free agents were also excluded.

I'll update with those transactions as they become official.

Separately from this blog item, I also produced a chart showing team-by-team average ages for unrestricted free agents.

The New England Patriots' UFAs led the way with a 31.64 average, ahead of those for Tennessee (31.1), Chicago (30.84) and Seattle (30.81). The Seahawks will get younger this offseason by failing to re-sign some of their older UFAs. Denver (27.56), Carolina (27.85) and Buffalo (28.2) had the youngest UFAs this offseason.

Just passing along as a reference point.

Seattle in particular has sought to get younger.

We'll remain in a holding pattern here while waiting for the NFL and NFL Players Association to announce a post-lockout schedule.

The 26-column rosters I make available for download periodically remain in flux. I've added a column showing when players' contracts expire, with notations for contracts that void. A few players' contract lengths proved elusive for now. I eventually hope to add information for 2010 starts for each player.

The roster counts showing atop each team's sheet reflect players under contract through the 2010 season. I'll update these rosters once we know for certain when free agency begins and under what terms. The roster counts will shrink considerably.

I'll make available updated files periodically. These can help track where NFC West teams stand in relation to the rest of the NFL.

There's not much to say until we know with more certainty what is happening next.