Seahawks safety driven to suceed

Published 7:45 am Friday, January 11, 2008

In the summer of 2000, in the days leading up to his first NFL training camp, the world was bright and promising for Deon Grant.

He was, after all, a first-team All-America safety from the University of Tennessee and a second-round draft choice of the Carolina Panthers. He was joining an organization on the rise — the Panthers would be in the Super Bowl three seasons later — and Grant figured to be a mainstay in the team’s defensive secondary for years to come.

Weeks later, he was wondering if he would ever walk normally again, let alone step onto a football field.

Grant, who always had played the game with boyish joy and enthusiastic abandon, suffered a freak and perhaps career-ending injury during a seven-on-seven drill in the early days of camp. It was a dislocated and fractured left hip, and it didn’t take x-rays or other subsequent tests to know it was extremely serious.

“My leg was like a broken branch about to break off a tree,” he said. “That’s how it felt when I tried to move it. I had no kind of control over it.”

At the hospital, where Grant stayed an entire month, grim-faced doctors delivered the dire prognosis.

“They told me I’d never walk the same and that my career was over with,” he recalled. “And right then it flashed in front of me that my last down of football had already taken place.”

Later, left to himself, Grant lay quietly in his bed and tried to imagine being without the game he lived and loved so much.

“It was devastating,” he said. “I just closed my eyes, had some tears and prayed a little bit. But I really thought it was over.” Even after his release from the hospital, he added, “I still thought there was no chance.”

Yet medical science, aided by Grant’s own steely spirit, had a few surprises in store. He began to heal and then to rehab, and in time he got well enough to walk. Then came jogging and eventually he was running. Each new progression gave him new hope, and by the start of the 2001 season, Grant was ready to resume his career.

Since then, fueled by the memory of what he came so close to losing, Grant has resolved to play in every game, in every possible minute. And he has done exactly that, appearing in 118 consecutive regular-season and playoff games — first with Carolina for three more years, the next three with Jacksonville, and finally this season with Seattle.

The string will reach 119 on Saturday when the Seahawks visit Green Bay for a 1:30 p.m. NFC playoff game against the Packers.

Grant was one of three important free-agent defensive acquisitions by the Seahawks in the past offseason, along with end Patrick Kerney (Atlanta) and safety Brian Russell (Cleveland). That trio has joined returning stalwarts like Pro Bowl linebackers Julian Peterson and Lofa Tatupu, along with cornerback Marcus Trufant, a first-time Pro Bowler in 2007, to remake and rejuvenate Seattle’s defense.

The Seahawks were so determined to sign Grant last spring that they offered him a six-year deal worth around $30 million. That is the third-largest contract the team has ever given to an outside free agent, and it makes him the third-highest-paid safety in the NFL this season.

Part of the appeal, said Seattle assistant head coach and defensive backs coach Jim Mora, was Grant’s “complete knowledge of the game.”

“He’s not one of those guys who just shows up, goes in the meeting (with the other defensive backs), watches the film, and then goes home and thinks about something else,” Mora went on. “(Football) is always on his mind. He’ll come in every day with a new thought, a new question, and it shows you that he’s been looking at film at night, and thinking about his assignments and his opponent.”

Though some newcomers need time to acclimate to different teammates and surroundings, “Deon came in and was in instant leader,” Trufant said. “He’s a guy who knows the game of football inside and out, and he’s about his business on the field. He leads by example. He works hard every day, and then guys look at Deon and they see him working hard and they follow suit.”

“He brings tremendous leadership,” Peterson said. “He has that competitive edge and that’s the biggest thing. He makes sure nobody is getting complacent. He does a good job of keeping guys fired up because that’s his nature.”

Leadership and personal responsibility are traits Grant learned as a boy growing up in Augusta, Ga., where he lived with his mother and two younger sisters.

“My mom had to be at work a lot,” he said, “and we were staying in the inner city at the time, so I had to make sure that I was doing the right things. And at the same time, I had to make sure my sisters were taken care of while my mom was working.”

Football became his path to a better life, for himself and his family, and it happened first through education — he majored in electrical engineering at Tennessee — and then financially when he became a well-paid NFL player. And now, having fully recovered from a grievous injury, about the only thing missing for him is a Super Bowl championship.

Grant played in the 2004 Super Bowl, which Carolina lost to the New England Patriots 32-29, and he’s eager for another crack with the Seahawks.

“When I ran out the tunnel right before the (Super Bowl),” he recalled, “it felt like I was running on air. All these lights were flashing and the whole world was watching. That feeling was priceless, and it’s the main thing that’s been stuck in mind from that Super Bowl experience.

“And it’s something I want to get back to so bad,” he said. “But this time I want to win.”