After catching 79 passes for 911 yards, far below the production he's accustomed to, in his first season with the Seattle Seahawks, wide receiver T.J. Houshmandzadeh is vowing to produce in 2010.

Having surgery to repair a sports hernia which probably should have been fixed last off-season--injured 31-year old wideouts don't get $8M per year contracts--should help, and as Houshmandzadeh tells Jerry Brewer of the Seattle Times, a new offensive coordinator will, too.

"I came here last year being told one thing and expecting this and expecting that, and it wasn't that case," Houshmandzadeh said of his role in Knapp's offense. "And I'm an upfront dude, you know. I speak my mind. I'm not going to beat around the bush. I just felt like I was less involved in the offense last year than I was in Cincinnati, and in Cincinnati, we had more weapons. That was baffling to me."

While Brewer says Houshmandzadeh respects former head coach Jim Mora, he was still critical of how practices were run once the season started.

"We just had a tendency to ease up a little bit, you know," Houshmandzadeh says of the practices. "When the guy across from you is not trying to stop you, you--I wouldn't say go through the motions--but you don't go as hard. You're not perfecting your craft, so to speak, like you would if you knew a guy was trying to stop you.

"That's just the way practices were. They weren't competitive, for whatever reason. And for me, it hurt me because I didn't come from a program that operated like that. Training camp practices last year were competitive. But once we got into the season, it was a different dynamic."

Though he missed most of the team's OTAs and mini-camps, Houshmandzadeh is once again expected to be the most-targeted receiver in the Seahawks' passing game in 2010. With Pete Carroll bringing an "Always Compete" mantra to the franchise this off-season (that motto inscribed in a new scoreboard erected next to the practice field at the team's facility), Houshmandzadeh shouldn't have too much to complain about this season.

Unless, of course, someone on the radio says something bad about him.