RENTON, Wash. (AP) - Ryan Plackemeier says Seahawks coaches have told him he will start Monday's preseason game at San Diego.

He may share later-game punting with Reggie Hodges, the impressive free agent replacement for more than a month while Plackemeier has recovered from a torn pectoral muscle. It will be Plackemeier's first game punting since last January's loss at Green Bay in the divisional playoffs.

Since then, Hodges has arrived and impressed, pushing the incumbent for his job.

"They want to get me some reps in a game," Plackemeier said Wednesday. He has been back punting in practice for more than a week.

Seattle's punter since his selection in the seventh round of the 2006 draft was happy when rains moved Wednesday's special-teams practice to the team's new indoor field, which looks like a hangar for a jumbo jet attached to the team's new $60 million headquarters. Plackemeier concentrated on trying to get his punts to reach the steel beams hanging overhead from the 95-foot-high ceiling. It's a rare, built-in measure of a punt's hang time, one of the most important factors in limiting effective returns by the opponent.

He hit the beams for the first two times on Wednesday. Hodges came close a couple of times.

"To hit those beams is a hang time of 5.1, 5.2," seconds, Plackemeier said, reciting the time punters strive to get in games. "It's a good measure. It helps you work on swinging up on the ball in here."

The old, inflatable practice "bubble" at the team's former facility in Kirkland was so uselessly short for kickers, Plackemeier and the placekickers used to boot alone in the rain. He said that outdoors he doesn't have a measurable goal to work on hang time, so he tends to just punt for distance.

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BRANCH CHUGS ON: Wide receiver Deion Branch continued his conspicuous rehabilitation from reconstructive knee surgery by running backward up a grass berm on the sidelines of the new practice field while his teammates drilled a few yards away in the morning. All week, Branch has been running with a huge rubber band around his waist and doing other workouts. He is trying to return to practice for a test a few days before the opener.

"I was hoping that we'd have him for the first ball game. And I've said it before, I think the important thing is how he feels about it," coach Mike Holmgren said. "You come off that particular surgery, it's a bugger. It's tough. I think that every player I've known, particularly at wide receiver - (Bobby) Engram being an example - you're nervous about it. You're unsure. Even though you're running and that stuff, how's it going to react when you get into a game?"

If the Seahawks don't think Branch is ready seven months after a surgery that often has a recovery time of a year or more, they could place him on the physically unable to perform list for the season's first six games and free a roster spot when final cuts are due Aug. 30. That could get impressive rookie running back Justin Forsett or undrafted free agent linebacker David Hawthorne on the team.

Seattle cannot use the unable to perform list with leading receiver Engram, who had the same surgery as Branch in 2000 and now may be out until October with a broken shoulder. Engram passed a pre-camp physical, then got hurt. Branch has yet to pass a physical.

"That's an option you have. But it's too early" to tell, Holmgren said of Branch. "All those lists and things take a back seat to his ability to play, and when he can play."