‘Big brother’ Milloy is the Seahawks’ voice of wisdom

Published 11:47 pm Saturday, September 25, 2010

RENTON — It was an easy assumption to make when the Seahawks brought Lawyer Milloy back for a 15th NFL season.

At 36, the former Pro Bowler was coming off a season in which he mostly played on special teams, and the Seahawks were making moves to get younger with a new coach and general manager in the fold. Yet when minicamps picked up in the spring, there was Milloy, back on the field for a second season with his hometown Seahawks.

Clearly, we all assumed, Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll brought the veteran safety back not for whatever football ability he had left, but rather to serve as a mentor for first-round pick Earl Thomas. The guy turns 37 in November, after all, so he must have been coming back to be a locker-room leader, right?

Not exactly.

Yes, Milloy has been those things — the vocal leader in the secondary, the outspoken presence in the locker room, the constant voice in Thomas’ ear — but the former University of Washington All-American has been a lot more than that. After playing sparingly on defense last year, starting just two games, Milloy is the Seahawks’ starting strong safety this season.

Last weekend in Denver, Milloy was on the field for all but two defensive plays, according to a personnel breakdown by Scout.com’s Brian McIntyre. In the season opener, Milloy missed part of the first half with an eye injury, but still appeared on 40 of 66 plays. So through two games, Milloy has been on the field for 112 snaps at safety. Last season, in 16 games, he appeared at safety for 276.

And through two games, Milloy has been one of the defense’s most physical players and is third on the team with 11 tackles.

“He’s been very physical, very tough,” said Carroll, who also coached Milloy for three years in New England from 1997-1999. “He’s living up to the billing of what he’s always been, you know, he’s been a physical, tough guy. We love that about him.”

When Milloy joined the Seahawks last season, he said from the beginning that he would play whatever role was asked of him, but that didn’t mean he was happy spending most of his time on special teams. Milloy has won a Super Bowl, he’s a four-time Pro Bowler, but for the bulk of last season, he was relegated to the role of way-over-qualified special teams standout.

A big part of why Milloy came back for a 15th season was to show that he still had what it takes to be a starting safety.

“I definitely didn’t want to go out like that,” he said. “As a player you always want to go out on your own terms, and a lot of last year I felt like was taken from me.”

And in 2010, Milloy is definitely doing things on his terms. After re-signing with Seattle after the draft, he was almost immediately running with the first-team defense, and after starting the first two games this season, he now has made 200 starts in his NFL career.

“It is a great milestone for me, I’m very proud of that,” he said. “Not too many people can say that.”

Indeed very few can. Both Milloy and Denver safety Brian Dawkins reached the 200-start milestone last weekend, and of active players, only Brett Favre (287) has started more games. If Milloy can stay healthy and remain a starter this season, he would rank 32nd all time for career games started at the end of the year.

A big part of starting that many games has been an ability to avoid injuries — “I’ve tried to be allergic to the training room,” he says — but a healthy dose of toughness has been necessary as well. In 2004 while with Buffalo, Milloy came back from a cracked forearm after missing five games, and in another season he played a few games with a cast on a broken thumb.

“I can’t say in my 200 starts that I never hurt in the games,” he said. “But something inside of me got me back out there. … It’s just something inside of me, man. I love the sport. I hate when it’s taken away from me, even practice, or whatever. This is what I do. It’s what I love.”

Reaching 200 starts wasn’t a given for Milloy after Atlanta declined to re-sign him following the 2008 season. Despite racking up 236 tackles in his final two seasons in Atlanta, the Falcons let him walk, and few teams were interested in the then 35-year-old. Milloy continued to prepare for a 14th season, but the Tacoma native also began reaching out to contacts in the Seattle business community to start planning for a life after football.

“This league is getting younger and younger, and last year, for me, was a true testament to that,” he said. “Here I am, a guy that had almost 120 tackles for a playoff team in Atlanta, and really had no phone calls in the offseason. … That’s just the way the league is going right now. They’re trying to see if the young guys will pan out. They’re really getting away from, ‘Can the guy play?’”

Eventually the Seahawks gave Milloy a job, just not the one he wanted. Milloy didn’t complain about the lack of playing time last season, but it ate at him as the season wore on.

“Last year, it was a very humbling experience for me,” he said. “People probably assumed that I was on the bench because I couldn’t play and obviously that wasn’t the reason. But I fought through it, knowing that given another opportunity I would make the most of it, and that’s what I’m doing this year.”

Yet as much as Milloy wants to be known for his play on the field this year, the fact is that has had an invaluable impact on his teammates, particularly Thomas, who was immediately thrust into a starting role as a rookie.

“Lawyer is a real benefit, and really Earl is the guy that is benefitting from this,” Carroll said. “He’ll talk to Earl (Thomas) every play, every snap, every time they break the huddle there’s a conversation or there’s a signal or something that’s going on between those guys.”

Milloy hears the playful jabs about his age from his teammates. Kelly Jennings, meaning nothing but respect, referred to Milloy as a father figure, not exactly the ideal comparison for someone in this young man’s game.

But whether he’s known as an old man, a mentor, or even a father figure, Milloy still has plenty to give to the Seahawks and to football.

“Lawyer, he brings a lot of intangibles — his wisdom, his insight, his knowledge, and of course his toughness,” said cornerback Roy Lewis, another former Husky. “It just trickles down to all of us. He’s like the big brother in the room. He’s hard on us, and especially on me. He holds all of us to a high standard. We appreciate him, man. … If you’ve got a 15-year vet who’s still flying around, when younger players see that, you’ve got no excuse.

“He’s a hell of a player, that’s why he’s lasted this long in this league.”

Herald Writer John Boyle: jboyle@heraldnet.com. For more Seahawks coverage, check out the Seahawks blog at heraldnet.com/seahawksblog