By Gregg Bell
The News Tribune
RENTON — Sheldon Richardson was barely settled into his new seat in his new building for his first team meeting with his new team, when his new Seahawks teammates clowned him.
Pranks a lot.
“These guys are crazy,” Seattle’s latest centerpiece defensive tackle said Monday following his first Seahawks practice. “In a good way.
“Team meetings are nuts. Team meetings are crazy,” Richardson said, laughing. “They got me today, cracked a little joke on me. I won’t go into it.”
Hours later, he was still beaming over it.
“It was fun. It was fun,” he said. “Fun environment.”
No doubt, Richardson had reason to smile on Day 1 of his new football life.
It came about following a flurry of key events in a couples hours of Friday morning. Seahawks No. 1 wide receiver Doug Baldwin agreed to turn salary into signing bonus money to allow his team to free $5.2 million under this year’s salary cap.
That gave general manager John Schneider the green light to trade a second-round draft choice and five-year wide receiver Jermaine Kearse, the team’s career co-leader with six playoff touchdown receptions, to the Jets for Richardson.
How big an opportunity is this for him, age 26? After just leaving Jets team that is rebuilding and is not expected to win much this season and coming to a Seattle team with a potentially dominant defense that has been to two of the last Super Bowls and is a championship contender again this season?
“Huge,” he said. “It’s huge.”
“It’s a good opportunity here. I plan to make the most of it.”
So where exactly will he play?
For now, as a tackle on every down, inside in three-technique between the opposing guard and tackle. He’ll be a run stopper on early downs and next to Pro Bowl defensive end Michael Bennett inside on passing downs. But don’t be surprised if by late this season he and Bennett are moving up and down the defensive line picking out favorable match-ups for Seattle and potential migraines for offenses.
“I’m playing three-technique. That’s all I know,” he said.
Nothing else?
“That’s it,” he said with a grin. “This defense is kind of stacked.”
Richardson went to the Pro Bowl in 2014 after having eight sacks as a tackle that could also go outside at end for the Jets. He had five in 2015, when he played in just 11 games because of a four-game drug suspension. He’s played inside as a three-technique defensive tackle between the opposing guard and tackle, head up on the center as a nose tackle, outside as an end, even as a linebacker with New York.
While saying he will play anywhere, he said “my home is three-technique. They know where I’m best suited.”
That’s all the Seahawks have told him he’ll play so far. That’s the role Ahtyba Rubin had until the Seahawks released the 31-year old on Saturday because they now had Richardson instead.
“He’s really played all over the place…they even dropped him in coverage,” coach Pete Carroll said of the Jets. “We’ll start him off playing him inside; we’ve got to get him ready to play in a week’s time. And then we’ll progress from there, as we always do.”
Carroll acknowledged losing top rookie draft choice Malik McDowell, who Seattle expected to be its new, versatile, pass-rushing defensive tackle this year, to an ATV accident and major injuries in July created the team’s need to acquire Richardson.
“When we realized we weren’t going to have him, it made us realize and look to see if we could find someone to fit that spot,” Carroll said.
Richardson said he’s not thinking about his future beyond this season in Seattle. All of his $8,069,000 salary is guaranteed for 2017. That is partly why Carroll chuckled and said Richardson is “definitely” an every-down player for this defense.
His contract expires after this season, when he could become a free agent staring down a potentially huge payday if this season goes as he and the Seahawks hope it does. He says he’s not thinking about that now, days before he lines up for his new team at Lambeau Field against the Green Bay Packers.
“Let the Lord take me on that one,” he said of his contract future.
Richardson had nothing but positives to say about his four seasons with the Jets, who took him 13th overall in the 2013 draft and then, using his words, stuck by him through “tough times.”
“I’m going to ride with them for the rest of my life, because they looked out for me in tough times, my tribulations and trials and stuff like that,” he said.
After a police chase outside St. Louis in July 2015 in which he was going 143 mph in a Bentley that had his 12-year-old nephew and a loaded gun registered to him in it – he paid more than $1,000 to four traffic citations — Richardson missed the first four games of the 2015 season after testing positive for marijuana.
He said that was about the time he thought the Jets might give up on him.
“At one point, yeah,” he said. “That was, like, two years ago.
“But other than that they kept it real honest with me. And I can’t ask for anything more than that.”
He’s known Carroll for about a decade. Sort of.
When Carroll was in one of his final recruiting seasons leading USC, before he took the Seahawks’ job in January 2011, he tried to get Richardson to sign with the Trojans.
“Yeah, he did,” Richardson said. “He was late.”
Carroll actually had his young assistant back then, Lane Kiffin, make the Trojans’ recruiting pitch to Richardson at his home in St. Louis. But it was three days before national signing day in college football. So, yes, far too late.
Richardson went to junior college in Visalia, California, at the College of the Sequoias before eventually coming home to Missouri to play for former University of Washington assistant Gary Pinkel.
He’s a long way from Visalia and Missouri now.
Sunday, he’ll start in one of the NFL’s most, yes, “stacked” defensive fronts.
“They already had a dominant defense,” Richardson said of his new, pranking, “crazy” Seahawks.
“I’m just going to come in and contribute and help this team get Ws.”
CARROLL ON KASEN WILLIAMS
Carroll commented on Seattle waiving Kasen Williams after the former University of Washington wide receiver’s often-spectacular preseason. Cleveland claimed Williams off waivers Sunday.
“Certainly (tough). Certainly,” the coach said. “He’s a great kid. We love him. You can tell our players love him. He’s tall. He’s strong.
“It’s excruciating, based on the time we spent together and the guys we are dealing with. There’s a lot of stuff that we take into consideration. A lot more than any one aspect of the process. Kasen had great games, did beautiful stuff, did well. But other guys did really well, too. And the rest of the process adds to it. We have to make the decisions and see how it all fits. And sometimes you lose guys. You have those things.
“Kasen, I was talking to him all the way up until he got claimed, you know, and hoped that we could get him back. Maybe we will some day.”
Carroll said it came down to “the mixture of guys that we needed to put together in a position group.”
Asked if special teams was a particular factor for Williams, Carroll said: “It’s always a big factor in these decisions. He had done well. He had done better than he had in the past, and I commend him for that.”
MCDOWELL TO BE AROUND THE TEAM
McDowell has been recovering at home in Michigan. Carroll said he will begin coming around Seahawks’ headquarters in the coming days and weeks but not to work out.
The team still doesn’t know when McDowell can play again, but it still doesn’t sound like it will be any time this season.
“I have nothing else to say about the injury itself; nothing else has been reported,” Carroll said. “But we are trying to work him back in with us, just reconnect and make sure that he has a sense of coming to work and all that stuff … with no demands on him.”
PRACTICE SQUAD SET
Trevone Boykin is back — on the practice squad.
The Seahawks announced the 10 players they signed to the first practice squad of the regular season. They practiced Monday. Eight are guys they released on Saturday while getting the active roster down to 53 for the start of the regular season Sunday at Green Bay.
The list: Boykin, RB Mike Davis, WR Cyril Grayson, C Joey Hunt, WR David Moore, DT Garrison Smith, T Tyrone Swoopes and CB Mike Tyson. The two practice-squad players from outside the organization are undrafted rookies: LB Austin Calitro and OT Jarron Jones.
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