‘We got a steal’ with Dial signing
GREEN BAY – When
Quinton Dial signed with the Green Bay Packers this week, he didn’t have to look far for a familiar face.
A couple lockers down was Ahmad Brooks, a former teammate with the San Francisco 49ers. But Brooks wasn’t the only player Dial recognized.
Across the locker room, he found Packers safety Ha Ha Clinton-Dix.
The two go further back than Dial and Brooks, members of the same vaunted 2011 Alabama recruiting class. The 49ers drafted Dial with a fifth-round pick in 2013. Clinton-Dix was drafted in the first round one year later.
Clinton-Dix said he has tracked his former college teammate’s career ever since. When the 49ers released Dial last weekend, Clinton-Dix said, he couldn’t believe it.
“That was a total shock to me,” Clinton-Dix said. “A guy that I’ve been watching since he got in the league, I didn’t see that coming at all. That was a shock. When they told me they were bringing him in here, I’m like, ‘Damn, he got cut?’ That was definitely eye-opening. We got a steal.”
Dial said Clinton-Dix helped recruit him to the Packers. They discussed defensive coordinator
Dom Capers’ scheme, and also the locker room culture. The duo was lured to Alabama by college football’s best recruiter, coach Nick Saban.
Maybe some of Saban’s effectiveness rubbed off.
“He did pretty good,” Dial said of Clinton-Dix’s recruiting. “I’m here.”
Painful memory: It wasn’t until the Packers’ ninth practice of camp that their special teams practiced recovering onside kicks, but tight end
Martellus Bennett understood the significance.
Bennett was at CenturyLink Field in Seattle during the 2014 NFC Championship Game cheering for his brother, Seahawks defensive end
Michael Bennett. He watched former Packers tight end Brandon Bostick botch the onside kick, opening the door to Seattle’s miraculous comeback victory.
No, Bennett said he hasn’t mentioned that game with any of his teammates since signing with the Packers this spring.
“I try not to bring that (expletive) up,” Bennett said. “I know it’s like saying Voldemort in Hogwarts. You don’t want to say it. So I don’t bring it up. So when they say ‘hands team!’ I just am like — you know, I don’t say anything. I’m not going to touch it.
“I’m not going to be that guy.”
Only 18 players on the Packers roster were active for that game in January 2015.
Seventeen have since gotten whatever small revenge a regular-season
win brings. The Packers have beaten the Seahawks twice since the NFC title game. Safety Morgan
Burnett, who infamously slid after intercepting Seahawks quarterback
Russell Wilson with roughly five minutes left in the fourth quarter, said he hardly thinks about that game anymore.
“That’s long ago,” Burnett said. “You can’t think about that now.”
The one exception is cornerback Davon House.
After the 2014 season, House signed as a free agent with the Jaguars. He’ll play the Seahawks on Sunday for the first time since the NFC Championship Game.
House admitted the past few days have returned bad memories.
House said he still remembers the “Fail Mary” loss in 2012.
“We should’ve won,” he said.
The NFC title game is more painful. While Bostick’s botch became the indelible image of that collapse, House can’t forget another special-teams play.
He was a perimeter defender on the block team when the Seahawks lined up for a 38-yard field goal in the third quarter. Instead of kicking, holder
Jon Ryan scrambled around House, whose job was to block the kick.
House watched as Ryan completed a touchdown pass to lineman Garry Gilliam, giving the Seahawks their first points.
“The one that hurts me the most,” House said, “is the fake field goal. If I wasn’t doing my job, I could’ve made the tackle, and I could’ve stopped him. But I was doing my job, and they did a fake.
“So if I don’t do my job, I make the tackle, and the other guy doesn’t get in trouble on our team. But I
did my job, the guy rolls out, and the rest is history.” Lacy ponders Leap: For four seasons, Eddie
Lacy’s celebration was automatic anytime he scored at Lambeau Field.
The former Packers running back would jog over to the stands, leap that big, green wall, and connect with fans. Now in the Seahawks’ backfield, it would be taboo for Lacy to do the Lambeau Leap if he scores Sunday.
That hasn’t stopped him from considering it.
“Honestly, I’ve been thinking about that for the past two days,” Lacy told reporters in Seattle this week. “Part of me wants to, but I don’t want to get pushed down. So I don’t know how the crowd will react to that. Maybe I can find a small patch of Seahawks fans and do it there.”
Injury update: The Packers plan to give right tackle Bryan Bulaga the entire week before deciding his availability for Sunday.
Bulaga was officially labeled as questionable on the injury report Friday, two days after he returned to practice after missing the last two weeks with a sprained ankle. He spent the early portions of practice Thursday inside the Don Hutson Center, but was expected to be in pads.
Rookie defensive lineman Montravius Adams practiced in pads Thursday for the first time since being drafted. Adams went through the early portion of individual drills, but was held out the rest of the way. Adams was officially ruled out.
Also, the Packers reached an injury settlement with fullback Joe
Kerridge, according to the transaction wire. Kerridge had suffered a calf injury late in camp.