Super Bowl-bound Seahawks haven for unwanted free agents
RENTON, Wash. — “Give us your ignored, your unappreciated, your huddled free agents yearning to compete.”
The promise of a brighter future, a golden door, is contained in a brochure the Seattle Seahawks send out to undrafted prospects and others who have fallen off the grid. Head coach Pete Carroll and general manager John Schneider have built a champion team, headed to its second straight Super Bowl appearance, by recruiting players with qualities not always apparent from test scores, combines and the eyeball test.
Eight free agents contributed significantly to winning Super Bowl XLVIII last year, among them receivers Jermaine Kearse, Doug Baldwin and Ricardo Lockette. And Seattle is off on a repeat quest against the New England Patriots in Glendale, Ariz., on Feb. 1 following Sunday’s epic 2822 overtime win against the Green Bay Packers.
The fingerprints of Seahawks free agents in the NFC title game were all over Sunday’s comeback from a 16-0 deficit, beginning with veteran punter Jon Ryan, of Regina, throwing to reserve tackle Garry Gilliam, a free agent from Penn State, on a fake field goal for Seattle’s first touchdown.
Later, Chris Matthews, a free agent from the CFL’s Winnipeg Blue Bombers, recovered an onside kick in the fourth quarter — the first pulled off successfully by the Seahawks since 2009 — that allowed Seattle to move on and take the lead for the first time.
“For Chris to make a huge heads-up play like that, when he doesn’t get a lot of opportunities (Matthews played in just three regular-season games), was really incredible,” Kearse said Monday as the only player representative available during a scheduled off day.
“I thought it was the play of the game. It’s what Pete instils in us and the philosophy of this organization. He gives people opportunities to compete. That brings out the best in players.”
That’s certainly true of Kearse, an undrafted free agent from the University of Washington, whose 35-yard touchdown reception from Russell Wilson was the final act of the miracle finish.
“You think about all the undrafted guys,” Kearse said. “You think about the guys who were drafted in the late rounds. I feel our team story is just full of adversity and pushing through it.”
Schneider and Carroll have proven to be perfect in transforming unheralded talent into an intelligent, fierce and all-for-one collective. But the sting of being told they weren’t quick, capable or strong enough still resonates and it doesn’t take much for those feelings to bubble to the surface.
On Sunday, Kearse and Baldwin embraced and dissolved into tears after, not only from the sheer emotion of having played in the most improbable game of their lives, but in knowing the arched eyebrows and circumspect glances are still out there.
“We get a lot of criticism from the national media,” he explained. “The way things went Sunday, it didn’t go well for us at the beginning. For us, it’s all about pushing forward, believing in ourselves. When the time came, we made those plays.”
Baldwin was stripped of the ball in the first quarter on a kickoff return and showed more frustration later when he dropped a pass, then picked up the ball and fired it at the players’ bench. He did end up with six catches for 106 yards, but he was still emotional after the game.
Indeed, Baldwin went ballistic on scores of media assembled outside the Seahawks’ locker-room, accusing them of being doubters and non-believers.
After he cooled down from his rage-of-the-underrated rant, the articulate Stanford grad who intends to become a math teacher talked about the team’s X factor and how adept Schneider and Carroll have been in finding and nurturing it.
“Pete and John have created an atmosphere here,” he said. “They’ve found guys that have that grit, that mental toughness to go out there and just play for each other. If you don’t have that, you’re not going to survive in this lockerroom.”