RENTON — Kris Richard’s nickname could be “Rolex.”
His timing really is that exquisite.
The native of Carson, California, was a three-year starter at hometown USC. His final, senior season was the first one Pete Carroll coached the Trojans. Richard had two interceptions and two touchdowns on returns of an interception and a fumble in 2001, for Carroll’s first USC team that finished 6-6 with a loss to Utah in the Las Vegas Bowl.
Richard then became the Seattle Seahawks’ third-round draft choice in 2002. He wore No. 42 in the old, blue-over-gray unis while playing in 38 games from 2002-04 for coach Mike Holmgren. Holmgren traded Richard to Miami (for forgettable defensive lineman Ronald Flemons, whom the Seahawks waived without him playing a game for them). Richard played one more game for San Francisco in 2005, signed with Oakland in 2007 to prolong his career, then was out of pro football at age 28.
The next year Carroll, himself a former defensive-backs coach, hired his former defensive back to be a graduate assistant for him at USC. That was Richard’s best timing; it was two seasons before the Seahawks made Carroll an offer he could not refuse: Return to the NFL as both Seattle’s coach and executive vice president for millions per year. They also gave Carroll the leeway to bring any of his USC staffers to Seattle he wanted.
That’s how Richard became the Seahawks’ assistant defensive backs coach in 2010. His rise in the NFL coincided with the Seahawks drafting Richard Sherman and Byron Maxwell, developing 2010 picks Earl Thomas and Kam Chancellor and finding Brandon Browner in the Canadian league. From 2012-14 Richard was the defensive backs coach for the “Legion of Boom,” the brash, bullish back end of the first defense to allow the fewest points in the league over three consecutive seasons since the Minnesota Vikings’ “Purple People Eaters” of the early 1970s.
So when Seahawks defensive coordinator Dan Quinn left in February to become the first-time head coach of the Atlanta Falcons, Carroll promoted Richard to be the chief of Seattle’s No. 1-ranked unit. He is the youngest defensive coordinator in the league; he doesn’t turn 36 until October.
The timing is, well, perfect.
Four practices into his first training camp in charge of the entire defense, Richard feels perfectly and appropriately blessed. After all, the year Richard was born Carroll was in his sixth season of coaching, as teaching defensive backs at Ohio State. That was 1979.
“This is grace, there’s no doubt about it. I recognize the real blessing that I have before me here,” Richard said before the Seahawks took their first day off from practice in camp on Tuesday.
“Of course there are aspirations to move on and ahead and do all that stuff right there. But that’s too far out in the future. I am focused on the things that are right out in front of me right now. Because that is what is going to help this football team be our best. If we’re all locked in and if we’re all focusing on the next day that’s when we give ourselves the best chance to be successful.”
The best chance for Seattle’s defense to be successful in 2015 is having all its guys practicing, let alone playing, together.
Ultra-popular team leader Kam Chancellor is five days into a camp holdout. The strong safety is seeking more than the $4.45 million he’s guaranteed in base salary this season.
Richard toes more of a public line than even his head coach does in empathizing with Chancellor while focusing on the need to prepare his current replacement in the starting defense, versatile special-teams ace DeShawn Shead.
“Obviously it’s the man that he is. He’s the captain of our football team and we respect him. That’s really the biggest deal,” Richard said of Chancellor, “and other than that, he knows that we have work to do here and his absence is the next man’s opportunity. He understands that and we understand that. He knows that we have work to do.”
A lot of work. The “Legion of Boom” looked like this during a session of first-team scrimmaging Monday after Sherman briefly was shaken up: Shead, Chancellor’s replacement Steven Terrell, Marcus Burley and Cary Williams.
No wonder Richard has been spending the majority of his time within his expertise, the secondary, so far in camp.
“Now the only difference is that I’m the one making (all the defense’s) calls. In regards to the effort that I give and my overall responsibility to the secondary, that remains the same,” he said. “Obviously, I do have a much bigger voice in regards to the overall grand scheme of how we’re going to operate. So in regards to how we operate while we’re on the field, the only real difference is now they hear my voice over the headsets.”
In that new, wider view, Richard has been wowed with how big yet athletic 325-plus-pound Ahtyba Rubin is as the new, “three-gap” defensive tackle over the offense’s guard.
“Ahtyba Rubin has been doing a fantastic job. He is a big, massive, strong man in there,” Richard said of the free-agent addition this spring from Cleveland. “He is absolutely going to fill the role we need as a big body in there taking on the run.”
But Richard’s inherent leaning toward the secondary allows him to assess Thomas more optimistically than the widespread speculation the All-Pro free safety won’t be healed in time to play in the opener Sept. 13 at St. Louis. He had shoulder surgery on Feb. 24
“He’s in a good place,” Richard said. “Of course, he misses being out there on the field. But he understands the position that he is in right now. He has to rehab, he has to get his shoulder strong.
“It may hurt him not to be able to be out there, but he understands exactly where he is and what we need of him in. So he’s in a really good place.”
So is Kris Richard.
As usual.
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