SEATTLE – They can measure a wide receiver with a tape and say he’s too small.
They can time him with a stopwatch and say he’s too slow. But they have yet to come up with a device that determines perhaps the most important thing about him.
“They can’t measure my heart,” said Bobby Engram. “That’s immeasurable.”
Just call his heart large. Very large.
If he’d listened to the Doubting Thomases, he’d have quit a long time ago.
“I just shake it off, man,” the eight-year NFL veteran said Sunday afternoon. “That’s been the story of my life, so I’m kinda used to it. I don’t let it bother me. I just use it to work out harder in the offseason.
“The only thing that matters is the guys in this locker room, the coaching staff and the players on this team. They know what I can do.”
They know that he can get open, catch passes and make plays. Maybe not the long, eye-popp ing, jaw-dropping, game-breaking plays of a Koren Robinson or a Darrell Jackson, but plays that make first downs, that keep drives going. They know that his routes are precise, his hands are sure and his resolve is great.
“He comes through when his number comes up,” Robinson said. “He doesn’t get the same opportunities that D-Jack and I get, but I know he’s going to step up and make a play.”
Sometimes, it’s that eye-popping, jaw-dropping, game-breaking kind of play. And sometimes, it’s more mundane, a play on which he merely gets so wide open that even Rick Mirer could probably find him with a pass. He made one of each in Seattle’s 35-14 thrashing of the Detroit Lions on Sunday at Seahawks Stadium.
It was the second quarter and Seattle was leading, 21-7. The Seahawks had gone three-and-out on their previous possession. They needed a big play to put some doubt in the Lions’ minds about an upset. And they got it.
With the spotlight often on Robinson and Jackson, the third man in the Seahawks’ wide receiving triumvirate perhaps is sometimes overlooked. Which is good for the Hawks. Because the too-small, too-slow Engram can lull people to sleep and suddenly, there he is, wide open and all alone, waiting for the ball to come his way.
And there it came, quarterback Matt Hasselbeck finding him open at the Detroit 12. Engram caught the ball and tiptoed down the left sideline into the north end zone for a 34-yard touchdown.
Now the man who didn’t catch a touchdown pass in the three previous years, had his second in the past two weeks.
And suddenly the Lions remembered who he was.
“With me, Koren and DJ on the field, any one of us is capable of making a big play,” Engram said. “I think I need to do more of that to take the pressure off of those guys. It’s kind of like a two-way street. We all complement each other.”
Engram wasn’t through.
The very next time he touched the ball, he did an eye-popping, jaw-dropping, game-breaking number on the Lions.
It came less than three minutes later.
The Lions punted. Engram caught the ball at the Seattle 17 and you could see a lane open up, a lane you could have driven a tank through. One player appeared to have an angle on him, but perhaps forgot that Engram has seven-plus years of outsmarting defenders. “I gave him a hesitation move, to try and put in his mind that I might cut up underneath him,” he said. “It gave me just enough of a pause that I was able to take off and he wasn’t able to get a solid lick on me.”
There was one last player who looked as if he could get a solid lick. No, forget it. It was the punter, Nick Harris. He made an attempt, futile though it was, and Engram turned on the jets – or what pass as jets for him. Eighty-three yards later, he pulled up in the end zone for his second touchdown in two minutes and 47 seconds.
He had avoided the ultimate indignity. Had the punter taken him down, “the guys in the locker room wouldn’t let you forget that,” he said.
Both of his touchdowns probably made the TV highlight shows Sunday night. One play that didn’t but that he was still proud of was a block he made on the third play of the game. It was a honey. With Shaun Alexander carrying the ball, Engram got out in front and pushed a defender at least 7 yards downfield, helping the Seahawk running back sprint to a 55-yard gain and setting up the first touchdown.
“I take pride in my blocking,” Engram said. “I knew Shaun was behind me and I knew he was gaining fast and I tried to just give him an angle to go one way or the other.”
The afternoon wasn’t all whistles, balloons and party hats for Engram, however.
After Hasselbeck scored on a 4-yard draw – with Engram again putting a helmet on a body – the Lions were forced to punt after the ensuing kickoff.
The punt went up, came down, hit Engram’s hands and dropped to the ground. No harm – teammate Reggie Tongue recovered the ball. No harm to anything but Engram’s self-esteem.
“I pride myself on not putting the ball on the ground,” he said. “My feet went dead and there was a little bit of a tricky wind but I’ve got to make that play.”
Don’t expect him to muff another punt anytime soon. “It’s correctable,” he said of the mistake.
If you want to know how hard Engram works sometimes to get open, all you had to do was watch him on a play early in the fourth quarter. Hasselbeck was scrambling, trying to find an open receiver. Nobody could break loose.
Engram was in a duel with cornerback Otis Smith, a 14-year veteran of the NFL. Engram would go one way, Smith was right on him. It went on like this for what seemed like a half-minute, but surely was much less. Engram bobbing and weaving, Smith on him like a second skin. Finally, Hasselbeck found Jackson open on the sideline for a 5-yard gain.
As the play ended, Engram and Smith stopped and stood looking at one another. Then Engram patted him on the backside and they went their respective ways. “You’re out here to compete,” Robinson said, “but if you feel like the dude beat you, you give him his props.”
Bobby Engram had opportunities to go to other teams and compete for starting jobs after last season, but chose to stay with the Seahawks, even though he knew he would be the No. 3 receiver behind Robinson and Jackson.
“I tell those guys all the time, it’s kind of like their show,” he said. “I’m just the supporting cast and I enjoy that.
“Don’t get me wrong, I compete just as hard (as anyone). Everybody who comes into this league wants to be the starter, wants to be the man, but I feel like what I have here is a little more important than being a starter somewhere else.”
Jackson calls him the “leader of our group.”
“A lot of people say he’s too small, and the Bears let him go, but Bobby has a lot more (to offer), he brings a lot, and he’s teaching us a lot.”
Engram says his motivation doesn’t come from the people who said he was too small or too slow. No, he said, it comes from the inside.
The immeasurable heart.
Which is very, very big.
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