How Amanda Ruller became a Seahawk coach

RENTON — Amanda Ruller doesn’t do “no.”

First, she’s a woman, from Canada, coaching in the NFL. That alone bulls through multiple barriers. It just flat ignores layers upon layers of “no.”

How Ruller became a Seahawks assistant running backs coach is as much a testament to the former University of Regina recordsetting sprinter’s determination and dream as it is to pro football changing with the times.

Last year, Tampa Bay Buccaneers assistant defensive line coach Lori Locust and assistant strength and conditioning coach Maral Javadifar became the first female NFL coaches to win the Super Bowl. Sarah Thomas also made history as the first woman to officiate a Super Bowl, as the down judge in the league’s title game. In 2020, Katie Sowers was the first woman to coach in a Super Bowl, as an offensive assistant for the San Francisco 49ers.

Yet Ruller is more than the right person in the right place at the right time in pro football.

She largely made herself a Seahawks assistant coach this preseason— she will coach during the team’s three exhibition games in August — through her own will. Thanks, Dad

When Ruller was a kid in the early 2000s, her family took her to Canadian Football League games of the Saskatchewan Roughriders in her native Regina.

That’s where she asked her dad: “Can women play football?”

“He said, ‘You can do ANYTHING the boys can do,” Ruller said Tuesday.

Ed Ruller was Amanda’s biggest fan. He passed away following a three-year battle with brain cancer. For the last nine years his daughter has supported the Brain Tumour Foundation of Canada. Each June in Regina, 1,000 kids play in the Ed Ruller Memorial Soccer Tournament.

Amanda says the tournament and this time of each year “turns my grief into extreme motivation. For life, for sports and to be successful in his name.”

With her dad’s encouragement, she tried out for boys’ flag-football teams in Regina.

“I kept being told, ‘No, you can’t do this. No, you can’t do that. You can’t even volunteer to coach in football,’” Ruller said.

So she ran track. She played softball. She played basketball and soccer. She became a competitive weight lifter; Ruller’s held the Saskatchewan record in her native province with a clean and jerk of 215 pounds.

She also was on the Canadian nation team for bobsleigh and skeleton.

You know, skeleton. The winter racing sport in which competitors speed at 80 mph down ice chutes, headfirst.

“That’s the kind of person I am,” Ruller said Tuesday at the Seahawks’ practice field, after coaching her latest practice.

“I came into this headfirst.” After setting track records sprinting and also playing soccer for the University of Regina— she was classmates there with former Seahawks punter Jon Ryan — Ruller went out for Team Canada’s national women’s football team.

She was one of the fastest players on the field. But the coaches said she couldn’t catch the ball, a prerequisite for a 5-foot-tall running back.

“They cut me,” Ruller said. “They said, ‘You’re fast, but you don’t have hands. You can’t be a good running back.’

“I said, ‘Just watch me.’”

The next day, she came to the team’s next practice. She returned the next day, too. And the next day.

“I showed up at practice,” she said.

“I made it.”

She became a running back in the Legends Football League for five seasons, in Los Angeles and Atlanta. She now coaches the running backs for Team Ontario’s U18 women’s tackle team.

“They said I couldn’t catch the ball. But I worked REALLY hard,” she said. “I watched extra film. I stayed after practice.

“I used my studies in university, because I am an exercise physiologist, to understand why we are doing everything we do as a football athlete.”

NFL over CFL

This spring, Ruller became part of the CFL’s Women in Football Program. She assisted the running backs coach of those same Saskatchewan Roughriders she watched with Dad as a kid.

But coaching for her hometown CFL team was not her passion. Coaching in the NFL is.

“An amazing opportunity,” Ruller said of her month with the Roughriders, “but I wanted to branch out.

“Because this is my dream to be working in the NFL.”

While she has been a running backs, special-teams and assitant strength coach at McMaster University in Ontario and worked with McMaster’s women’s flag football team, Ruller’s been applying for NFL jobs. For years, she’s been sending resumes to teams in the world’s premier football league. That was proving useless. Early this year she applied to the Bill Walsh NFL Minority Coaching Fellowship program for 2022.

She knew merely applying was not enough.

In March, Ruller went directly to the NFL. She traveled on her own to Indianapolis, to the league’s annual scouting combine.

“I took it upon myself to actually go to the NFL combine this year . ... I went by myself,” she said. “I got my resume in tons of people’s hands. I got to meet people face to face.

“Because I’ve applied to tons of NFL opportunities before, and I think when you just submit a resume they don’t get to see the type of person you are. And when you are hiring a coach, you have to trust them. You have to gain their trust and attention.

“So I was there. I was there. I worked my magic.”

That magic is her determination. Going to the NFL’s annual extravaganza of coaches, general managers, scouts and front-office personnel from all 32 teams gave Ruller a unique chance.

“Being in Canada, sometimes you don’t get a lot of opportunities to get in front of NFL personnel or coaches or people,” she said.

A Seahawks staffer — not a coach — called her soon after the combine.

“Gave me an opportunity, to just interview,” she said. “From there I was brought in, and I have this opportunity with you today.” Carroll is challenging Ruller Ruller is one of three assistant coaches working with the Seahawks this preseason on the Bill Walsh fellowship. Akeem Dent, a former NFL player for six seasons, is assisting special teams. Jonathan Saxon assisting the Seahawks’ defense. He is the defensive coordinator and linebackers coach at South Carolina State.

Last week during Seattle’s veteran minicamp, Ruller lined up as the strong safety on the scoutteam defense opposing quarterbacks Geno Smith and Drew Lock and the offense. The Seahawks published a photograph of Ruller running at running back Darwin Thompson.

Yes, she was smiling.

She is living her dream. Despite the trail-blazing of coaches Locust, Javadifar and Sowers with the Buccaneers and 49ers in the league before her, Ruller said she still faces obstacles realizing her dream of coaching in the NFL.

“Some of the roadblocks for me would just be proving myself, and getting that trust and attention,” she said. “A lot of times in football opportunities are about who you know. So, I need to gain more contacts. I need to know more people.

But, she added: “It’s definitely not based on my gender, all the time. Because once I give respect to the players, I give respect to the coaches, they give respect back.”

Coach Pete Carroll said he is challenging Ruller and her Seahawks fellowship colleagues.

“Akeem and Amanda and Johnny, they get thrown right in the middle of our stuff and they just got to latch on and go with us. We throw jobs and assignments and things at them. It’s not like we just kind of nudge them along,” Carroll said.

“I hope it’s different and better than they’ve ever seen it, and will ever see it. We’re trying to make it special for them. Because I love coaches and I love to help them, in some way, find what they have to offer this world of football and their world. It’s really important. And we treat them with total respect.

“We give them a lot of love, because I don’t want them wondering where they fit and all that.

“It’s a marvelous program. And over the years we’ve hired a lot of guys from internship approaches to us. I’ve always believed in growing our coaches. So we don’t treat this experience lightly, because this may be somebody that’s on our staff down the road.”

Ruller’s goal is fundamental, one men don’t have to set in football at any level: “To be judged on my ability, not who I am or my gender.”

She also has goals bigger than herself.

“One of my missions is to help young girls and women feel more comfortable within football, because when I started I wasn’t comfortable,” Ruller said. “I didn’t understand why I didn’t belong. I didn’t understand why people kept telling me ‘no.’ I kept being told I can’t be in this industry. “I said: Just watch me.

“I want anyone that starts in football — whether that’s in media, personnel, trainers — to feel like they belong here. That they are worthy. That they can see an opportunity. I never saw that growing up.

“I want to be that driving force for more women to think, ‘I can do this. I can make a career out of this.’”

Her immediate goal is to come out of training camp proving to Seattle or another NFL team she is worthy of a full-time coaching job.

Those who know Amanda Ruller know better than to doubt her.

“Everything I’ve done in my life, I have earned,” she said.

“Me standing up here, I’ve earned this spot today.”