Seahawks bond over stories of their paths to football glory

Ernest Jones IV was talking in front of his teammates. Again.

This time, the defense’s leader and signal caller wasn’t explaining Xs and Os. He wasn’t doing more of the on-field leading that transformed the Seahawks’ defense when he arrived in Seattle last fall in a midseason trade.

Jones was inside a meeting room on the second floor of the team’s Virginia Mason Athletic Center. He was being more than a star middle linebacker. He was being vulnerable.

The 25-year-old husband and father to baby boy Ernest V was sharing with his teammates his “why.”

Since they last played a game, in January to end last season out of the playoffs again, the Seahawks players sense they are now more tightly bonded. They understand each other, and their coaches, better.

Some of that is from this being the second offseason with coach Mike Macdonald. The 37-year-old innovator continues to change the way they think, train and play.

Much of it is from what Macdonald and his assistant coaches are doing in the defensive meeting rooms this spring.

Seahawks coaches are having players get up in front of their teammates and explain to them their “why.” Why they play this brutal sport that has such a high injury rate. Why they began as a kid and continue as adults to play a sport proven to have a debilitating effect on the quality of life for many well after they finish playing.

Teammates have been sharing their personal stories all during the Seahawks’ offseason workouts and practices. All since April until this week were voluntary. Yet this team had every one of 90 players on the roster present for most if not all that voluntary work.

For some of these “why” talks, players have brought in scrapbook photos of family members, and of themselves as kids.

It’s intensely personal.

It’s intensely effective in bringing together this Seattle team that is trying to get back to the playoffs for the first time in three years.

“They talk about their why, like, why they like playing football, why they like showing up every day,” veteran defensive end Leonard Williams said Wednesday, following the final minicamp practice. “And you know, they put up some pictures of their family and pictures of them when they were young, and just talk about what’s their driving force.”

“Football gave me everything I have in life,” Williams said. “I grew up, you know, homeless, at times. I grew up living in, in and out of hotels, motels, and, you know, kind of (had) an unstable lifestyle as a young kid.

“And when I found football in high school, it gave me stability. It gave me good male role models in my life. And it just gave me something to, like, kind of distract myself from everything going on at home.”

This happened when Williams was a student in and out of troubled times at Mainland High School in Daytona Beach, Florida, from 2009-12.

The man he credits for turning him from his often wayward life to loving football: Keynodo Hudson.

Hudson was Williams’ defensive coordinator at Mainland High. The coach’s first year at Mainland was Williams’ freshman year of high school there.

Hudson made Williams into a Florida state high school star at Mainland. Then, before Williams’ senior season at Mainland in 2011, USC hired Hudson as a defensive administrative assistant. Hudson recruited Williams to USC. The Trojans gave the formerly lost teen a football scholarship and a path to a productive, lucrative life.

That paved Williams’ path to becoming the sixth pick in the 2015 draft, by the Jets.

“He definitely helped me when I didn’t like going to class and didn’t like doing school work and all that stuff,” Williams said Wednesday of Hudson, “because he understood my why.

“And he kind of helped push me when I was going through hard times growing up.”

Devon Witherspoon’s mentor, too

Hudson is now the cornerbacks coach at Illinois. There, he recruited a slight, ball-hawking high school corner from Pensacola, Florida. Hudson actually began recruiting this kid to Florida Atlantic, when the coach was an FAU assistant in 2017 and ‘18.

That kid was Devon Witherspoon.

Seattle selected Witherspoon fifth overall in the 2023 draft.

Later that year, the Seahawks traded with the New York Giants to get Williams.

“Me and ‘Spoon’ both know him pretty well,” Williams said. “And ‘Spoon’ was, like, joking when I got traded here about how we both had him as one of our male role-model figures.” Leonard Williams’ love for football

Thanks to Hudson, thanks to Williams’ why, he’s now a Pro Bowl defensive end. The Seahawks are paying him $64.5 million on a contract that runs through 2026.

Last season, the disruptor the Seahawks call “Leo” flourished in Macdonald’s new system of moving linemen all across the line of scrimmage.

“Man, he’s one of our driving forces,” Macdonald said Wednesday. “You have to give him a lot of credit on his approach since we met him a year ago. We knew he was an awesome guy. We knew he was a great football player, but what we needed from him was more in terms of a leadership role and asserting himself and his style.

“At this point in your career to challenge yourself to take it to another level, I think that speaks volumes for who he is.”

The former kid in Dayton Beach without a home has earned more than $136 million in his 10 seasons since he was a first-round pick.

Yeah, Williams loves football.

“So for me after that, just learning from coaches, good male role models in my life, I just like fell in love with it,” he said. “Fell in love with the camaraderie, the family aspect of my teammates and stuff like that.

“And I’m sure you could ask every single person at this point: It’s never was about the money. The money ends up coming with it, obviously. But for every single person that talks about their why, it’s because they had some type of lifestyle like that growing up, and then it kind of brought them to this point.”

Macdonald feels the bonding from the Seahawks’ spring.

“We haven’t had to prove it yet with pads on,” the head coach said, “but definitely feel like we’re a connected group.”

Williams said his coaches having guys present their “why” to teammates is going to pay off in training camp that begins July 23, and in this Seahawks 2025 season.

It’s a season that is starting to feel like it may be a renewal. Heading into training camp starting July 23 the starting defense is far ahead of the offense, as it should be. The D is this team’s obvious strength. Sam Darnold, Klint Kubiak have some work to do.

“I think it helps a lot, because you get to hear from guys sometimes that you might not always hear from,” Williams said. “And then you get to hear someone’s why, like, there’s times where, you know, obviously going through camp is going to be hard. Everyone has tough days, hard days. And if I see somebody having a hard, tough day, I could understand that guy a little deeper now, on a human level.

“I can talk to him and let him know, like, ‘Hey, I know his ‘why’ now. And I know how to push him a little better now.”