I had the chance to talk 1-on-1 with Seahawks coach Pete Carroll about his three-man competition on Friday afternoon. I'm working on a column about it for Sunday's paper, but I did want to give you a taste of what he said, and what I took from that conversation. I'll just give a little snippet for now, and then talk more about the quarterbacks and the situation after the column runs.

He's still tight-lipped about specifics, but my conversation with Carroll left me with several impressions about this quarterback derby:

• Carroll believes the benefits of competition -- of putting a kind of pressure on the quarterbacks that attempts to mirror what they'll feel on Sunday -- is worth sacrificing the consistent reps that a predetermined starter would receive to prepare for the season.
• Carroll, whose public charisma belies the fact that he's a grinder behind the scenes, has already run through every scenario with his offensive staff and has a crystallized vision of what each quarterback must do to get the job. He also seems to have a mental scale of exactly what the Seahawks are sacrificing the longer the competition goes.

"There's no guesswork here in that regard," Carroll said. "We have a couple of different thresholds. We've already staged the whole thing."

• Carroll thinks watching the quarterbacks fight will keep his team hungry, not confused. "To have competition, which is the central theme of our program, go directly to the heart of the team is perfect," Carroll said. "That's exactly what we stand for."
• Finally, and this is quite concerning, the initial winner isn't guaranteed to keep the job. "I don't know if it'll be that static," Carroll said when asked if this competition was about finding The Man for long term. "I wouldn't count any of them out to continue to compete. You're not going to know what the season holds."

OK, that's a brief look at what's coming. I'll frame these impressions with my take, which is going to be that Carroll has earned some level of trust in this unconvention pursuit. I also reveal my hunch about what will happen. And what should happen.

We'll talk more about this Sunday, but for now, feel free to share whatever you wish about the Seahawks' QB battle.