Vikings’ Yoney is a good-hands person
Published 9:00 pm Wednesday, September 22, 2004
BELLINGHAM – Western Washington football player Nick Yoney came walking onto the track that circles the practice field the other afternoon, spotted a reporter interviewing Rick Carte and remarked, “You’re talking to a real tight end now.”
You won’t find any dissenters up here in the Land of the Viking. Nor will you find anyone of the opinion that Carte is the only “real” tight end on campus.
The guy talking up Carte has made himself into a legitimate player at that position after coming here as a wide receiver.
Yoney has improved so much over last year that Carte, a unanimous first-team Great Northwest Athletic Conference all-star last season, felt he couldn’t ease up in his summer workouts or he might lose his starting job.
“A lot of times a guy will think he’s got a position locked up,” Carte, a senior from Juneau, Alaska, said. “I’ve never had that feeling with Nick here.”
That says a lot about Yoney, a redshirt junior from Arlington, because not until last year did he
By Scott M. Johnson
Herald Writer
KIRKLAND – For some tips on how to play in the NFL, the Seattle Seahawks’ young defensive players could do worse than heeding the advice of 34-year-old linebacker Chad Brown.
As for an example of what not to do? Well, Chad Brown could help there, too.
Brown remembers an incident in his first preseason game 11 years ago, when he saw veteran teammate David Little in the huddle and eagerly started a conversation.
“I was like, ‘Did you know that in your rookie year, I was in the third grade?’” Brown, who is still recovering from a broken leg, recalled Wednesday. “He looked at me, rolled his eyes and said, ‘Shut up and get in the huddle.’”
A few of the Seahawks’ young greenhorns have treated Brown with a similar disrespect, telling him they loved watching him on television between Pop Warner games. But they’ve played well enough in his absence to make up for it.
Despite an average age of just 25.6 years, with no one older than 28, Seattle’s defense has played well beyond its age so far this season. After two games, the Seahawks lead the NFL in points allowed (6.5 per contest) and rank eighth in yards allowed (276.0 per contest).
This despite a starting lineup that includes a few guys who are barely old enough to get into a bar.
“Shoot, I already had girlfriends when some of these guys were born,” 34-year-old offensive lineman Robbie Tobeck said while looking around the locker room. “You go in the weight room, and they’re turning off great ’80s music. They don’t even know who Madonna or Michael Jackson is. It’s kind of scary.”
By way of comparison, the Seahawks’ starting defense for the 2003 opener had an average age of 28. Only three of this year’s starters – Anthony Simmons, Grant Wistrom and Chike Okeafor – are 28.
Last year’s defense had five starters age 30 or older. There are no thirty-somethings on the 2004 defense.
The 2003 defense included one player, John Randle, who played his final college game in the 1980s. This year’s defense has three starters who were born in the ’80s.
“It really just comes down to the players we have and the kind of coaches we have,” said Marcus Trufant, a 23-year-old cornerback who has started every game of his NFL career. “The young players we have don’t know what to expect, and we listen to the coaches because that’s all we know. We’re just going out there and trying our best, and we’re getting it done.”
Seattle’s starting defense includes seven players who are in their first or second years as starters. Twenty-five-year old Ken Lucas, in his fourth NFL season, is considered one of the veterans.
By NFL standards, 28-year-old players like Simmons, Wistrom and Okeafor are in their prime. Yet on this team, they are the old guard. Just ask Okeafor, whom rookie teammate Marcus Tubbs refers to as Papa Cheek.
“I’m still younger than a lot of cats, so I don’t really see myself as old,” Okeafor said. “But you can pass on knowledge that these guys can use for a long time and give them a jump-start to perfecting their craft.”
Far too often during Mike Holmgren’s tenure as coach of the Seahawks, he talked about the immaturity of an offense that was prone to mistakes. That offense is all grown up, and now the defense is in its infantile stages.
But the defensive youth movement hasn’t stood in the way of success.
“In my opinion, you can be more effective as a defensive player, younger, than an offensive player,” Holmgren said. “Because defense is so much athletic ability, speed, aggressiveness.”
Seattle’s defense is more confident in its aggressiveness because of a simpler scheme. Before Ray Rhodes, the Seahawks had a series of defensive coordinators who seemed to have a counter move for every adjustment the offense made.
Now players are being asked to think less while doing more.
“With defense, there’s a lot of reaction. It’s about what you see the offense doing, and reacting from there,” said Simmons, a seventh-year player who has already played for five different defensive coordinators in Seattle. “If you have to make a lot of adjustments, and switch here and there, it kind of slows down your reaction because you’re thinking a lot.”
Spoken like a true veteran. But Simmons and his fellow 28-year-olds aren’t playing like old men.
“They’ve got motors where they’re going 100 miles per hour 100 percent of the time,” Trufant said. “They’re running around like they’re rookies.
“I don’t look at anybody like an old guy on our defense.”
Not now. But there’s a third-grader somewhere that’s certain to one day hit them with a dose of reality.
