It's official, Okeafor is gone.

From the Seattle Times, "The Seahawks have lost another player in free agency, as defensive end Chike Okeafor reached an agreement on a multi-year deal with the Arizona Cardinals Monday afternoon.

Okeafor, who turns 29 later this month, chose the Cardinals over the Seahawks, though sources say both teams' contract offers were comparable."

I think that while it's obvious that the loss is unfortunate, because Okeafor is a decent player, two other things jump out at me here.
First, he went to an up and coming division rival, not good!
Second, and perhaps more importantly, he chose to leave in spite of the fact that the two contracts were comparable and in spite of the fact that we were a playoff team last year and the Cards never are. What does this say about the state of the team? In light of this and the comments from other players I have read (perhaps most notably the Dilfer phone call to KJR) I believe that we may have some rather serious locker room problems that need to get fixed double time. Players don't normally choose to upend their lives and move to a new city to play on a lesser team, in spite of roughly equivalent contract offers unles there are other problems the average fan is unaware of. For me this news is very unsettling, not just because we lost a good player and not just because he went to a division rival, but because it hints at deeper problems within the team, that most of us were probably unaware of. I don't like what this departure implies one little bit.