"We're going to sit him down to make sure we take great care of him as we gather more information," coach Pete Carroll said.

That ends an injury filled season for Rice, who missed the first two games because of a shouolder injury and more recently missed practices with a sore knee.

Rice was one of the Seahawks' top free-agent acquisitions. He caught 32 passes in the nine games he played.

Rice left Seattle's victory over Baltimore with a concussion and returned in time for the next game. He appeared suffered another injury in the first half of Seattle's loss to Washington, getting up wobbly, but passed tests and remained in the game. He came out of the game in the third quarter after diving for a pass, hitting his head on the turf.

Carroll indicated the concussion is not considered to be career-threatening, but that it would be multiple weeks before Rice would even be able to come back and the team decided it wasn't worth the risk of him suffering an additional injury if he were able to come back.

"We have to give him time," Carroll said. "He's going to have to sit for a number of weeks before he would be able to play anyway. We just want to make sure we take care of him and don't bring him back too soon."

Rice was not available for comment as the Seahawks policy is that players are not available for interviews until they have been cleared to return from a concussion.

Rice suffered damage to his labrum during training camp, but Carroll said there are no plans for him to undergo surgery to repair that injury.

Carroll indicated that he talked to Rice about being placed on injured reserve on Tuesday.

"He's got a series of issues that we can deal with and get him right," Carroll said. "It's the right thing for us to do. He knows that. He just doesn't want to hear it. I told him yesterday, you know, sometimes somebody has got to step in and tell you what you would never decide. We have to do that for him because as a competitor, there's no way he would step out right now."

Rice was one of several prominent free agents signed by Seattle. What did the Seahawks learn from his season?

"Here's what we know: He's a great player," Carroll said. "We see the stuff that he can do and the impact he can have. But unfortunately, we never got the continuity of getting all of the benefits of his play. It will happen. You can see the dynamics of his catching ability and ability to make special plays. It's obvious. We'll get him right and get him fit."

Carroll was also asked if the head injuries could be a career-threatening situation.

"We don't think that at all," Carroll said. "We just want to make sure that we get him out of this season is OK."

The league has a very firm testing protocol concerning recovery from concussions, and Stan Herring -- one of the Seahawks' team physicians -- is considered one of the leading authorities in sports concussions.

"With all of the upscale awareness about head injuries and everything, we're following along," Carroll said. "We're going to do the right thing here in this case, and as we continue to grow and learn about the ramifications and impacts of these injuries, we're just trying to do the right thing. We want to protect our guy is what it comes down to."