can the unaligned read files requirement be waived?

[e-manduchi]

I understand that the requirement to provide the sequence read files is because they are used for 2 things: mapping stats and building the BLAST database. I wonder if it's possible to have an option to waive this requirement when one wants to run PORT without the BLAST step (i.e. proviidng the rRNA filtered beforehand). Couldn't the mapping stats be calculated from the sam files, assuming these contain all reads?