By Scott M. Johnson
Herald Writer
KIRKLAND – Desire comes from within. It pumps through the blood of some as naturally as oxygen.
It can’t be implanted or unearthed beneath a blase exterior.
Or can it?
That’s been the season-long challenge for the Seattle Seahawks’ captains, whose role on this team has gone far beyond going out for the opening coin toss. In addition to focusing on their own play, all six captains carry the burden of being inspirational leaders on a team that sometimes looks uninspired.
“It’s tough,” said center Robbie Tobeck, one of the team’s six captains. “I don’t know what to say anymore. It’s crunch time, our backs are against the wall.”
Tobeck is one of six Seahawks captains this season who have been symbolically asked by coach Mike Holmgren to help get the blood pumping through Seattle’s locker room. He doesn’t profess to be the team motivator, but at times the Seahawks have gone into games looking like they have needed a kick in the pants.
“You’ve got to come in and be ready to play every week or you’ll be out of the league,” Tobeck said this week, after another pothole in the road to playoff contention dropped the Seahawks’ record to 5-5. “The average career is only three years. There’s no tomorrow. You don’t know if you’re going to get hurt, or when your last game is. There’s got to be a sense of urgency.”
Middle linebacker Levon Kirkland – a captain along with Chad Brown, Marcus Robertson, Ricky Watters, Matt Hasselbeck and Tobeck – was surprised at the lack of a bonafide locker room leader when he joined the team last March.
“You figured they’d have somebody,” Kirkland said. “I figured I could be a little bit more in the background. It surprised me. It wasn’t what I was used to.”
Despite being in his first year with the club, Kirkland has found himself in the position of giving the rousing pre-game speeches to get teammates fired up. He’s had to call at least one players-only meeting, and started motivating the team from the day he got here.
“It felt normal for Levon to talk,” backup linebacker Isaiah Kacyvenski said. “That’s the kind of person he is. Within five minutes of knowing him, you can just tell he’s a leader.”
Kirkland is one of three captains who are new to the team this year. That’s no coincidence.
“There were no true leaders last season,” Kacyvenski said. “That’s not to say that people didn’t play hard, but it was kind of scattered.
“We’ve been blessed this year with a lot of leaders. There are people that could be leaders, but aren’t necessarily the captains. It’s impressive that we had such a big group to pick from.”
With Robertson and Watters missing time due to injuries, and with Hasselbeck entering his first year as a starter, most of the internal leadership has fallen onto the shoulders of Kirkland, Tobeck and Brown.
“I don’t think it’s up to me to try and motivate the whole team,” Kirkland said. “All you can do is be yourself. If that means being the captain or being the leader, so be it.”
It has been a difficult year for Seattle’s captains because of the team’s inconsistency. Even they don’t know which team will show up each week: the one that pounded the Oakland Raiders on national television three weeks ago, or the one that made Kansas City look like a Super Bowl contender last Sunday.
“A 3-13 team, six games into the season they’re out of the playoffs; you’re just trying to find something to build on,” Tobeck said. “Now, this team, I think we’re good enough to get it done and go to the playoffs. That’s the frustrating thing. It’s very disappointing if we can’t right the ship. But we’re still right in the thick of things. It’s time to get it done.”
Holmgren had never before selected season-long captains during his first nine years as an NFL head coach. Frustration from his first two seasons in Seattle led him to change that philosophy this year in an effort to help provide the team with leadership.
“I’ve always said that they best way to motivate and snap yourself out of stuff is not from the coach, but from within,” Holmgren said earlier this month.
By picking captains, Holmgren has a self-appointed sounding board that acts as a go-between from himself to the players. He leans on his captains to help motivate the team, and in turn they can come to him and voice teammates’ concerns.
In a nutshell, that is the only job description.
But the ups and downs of this year’s schedule have forced all the captains to take it upon themselves to motivate the team in other ways. Kirkland held a players-only meeting the day after a 27-14 loss to the Washington Redskins. Tobeck gave a speech later that week.
Brown leads in a more subtle way, although he said he would welcome the opportunity to address his team if called upon.
“This is the NFL. Whether it’s the coach or the captain that motivates you, that doesn’t matter,” he said. “You have to motivate yourself. We can try to do things, but ultimately the responsibility lies on each individual.
“When I was named captain, I didn’t go home and open the Great Book of Football Speeches. I’m not going to walk around and yell at people or have these great speeches planned. I’m a more quiet person. My deal is to lead a little more by example.”
Brown said desire wasn’t the only missing ingredient in the loss to the Redskins, or in Sunday’s loss to Kansas City. Even when the team plays flat, Brown contends, that doesn’t mean the players aren’t ready to play.
While Holmgren has been visibly frustrated this week at his team’s lack of consistency, the six captains are going through a similar phase. They know something needs to be fixed, and that there isn’t much time to fix it.
“It’s a lot less talking and a lot more action than anything else,” Brown said. “The greatest speech in the world has never won a football game. Until everyone decides, ‘OK, this is it,’ who is the captain and who says what has no real importance.”
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