This was the only way Mack Strong would walk away from the football field.
He’d given everything. He got everything he possibly could out of the talent he had. He couldn’t give any more. His battered body finally surrendered. So he retired.
That’s after 15 seasons with the Seahawks. Fifteen years of bruised-purple shoulders. Fifteen years of neck stingers. At age 36, long after most NFL fullbacks have retired, Strong could no longer give any more.
So Monday, he walked away.
Strong should serve as an icon for the overlooked. He was an undrafted free agent who worked hard and stuck around. He spent his first NFL season on the Seahawks practice squad. You never found him on any NFL draft lists. You never found him on any fantasy league rosters. He wasn’t known for his dazzling moves or his great hands.
Mack Strong was a football player. His career was beautiful in both its length and simplicity. He blocked. He hit people for a living, often people who outweighed him by 40 pounds or more. Chris Warren, Ricky Watters and Shaun Alexander can thank Strong for their 1,000-yard seasons. They should have given him a good part of their mega-salaries.
Because without Mack Strong, the Seahawks running game — the Seahawks offense — would never have reached the excellence that it did. His contributions went largely unnoticed by mostly everyone, outside of his teammates.
The NFL finally noticed Strong in 2005, when it named him to his first Pro Bowl, an honor he repeated in 2006. By then, the league recognized Strong for the same reason Seattle fans had a decade earlier: that Strong was the best lead-blocking fullback in the league, probably ever.
What he did wasn’t glamorous. He did the dirty work. And he did it without flourish.
Walter Jones and Steve Hutchinson rightly got credit for Alexander’s 2005 MVP season, when the star runner finished the regular season with a franchise-record and NFL-high 1,880 rushing yards and a then-record 27 touchdowns. Strong deserved equal billing, not that he cared.
All Strong cared about was winning. And he was a winner.
He didn’t care about his own rushing yards. He didn’t care about recognition. He cared about coming to work every day. He cared about doing all he could to help his team. No one was the team player Mack Strong was.
That meant he wouldn’t carry the ball 25 times a game. That meant he wouldn’t string together multiple 100-yard games. That didn’t mean he would break-dance in the end zone after a touchdown. Strong scored five rushing touchdowns his entire career.
That wasn’t the way Strong would help his team and stay in the league. Strong was about doing the dirty work anonymously and unselfishly.
Who in the NFL was able to sacrifice his ego for the good of the team? Not Terrell Owens. Not Chad Johnson. Hardly anyone would allow themselves to do what Strong did every day.
Strong should serve as an example to those who believe they don’t have the talent to do what they want to do more than anything. Strong was smart enough to know what he couldn’t do, so he went full-bore at what he could do. At 6-foot, 245 pounds, he knew he could be a tough guy. He knew, in playing this position, that he had to be a tough guy.
How hard can someone work? How much can someone want something? How much is someone willing to pay the price to live a dream?
That was Mack Strong.
Just as important it is to know what Mack Strong was is to know what Mack Strong wasn’t.
He wasn’t flashy because he didn’t need to be.
He wasn’t lazy because he couldn’t be to stay in the NFL.
He wasn’t arrogant because that wasn’t the way he was brought up.
Mack Strong wasn’t a lot of things. He was only what he needed to be in order to play in the most demanding, punishing team sport there is for 15 years.
If he doesn’t belong in the Seahawks Ring of Honor, I don’t know who does.
Sports columnist John Sleeper: sleeper@heraldnet.com. To reach Sleeper’s blog, go to www.heraldnet.com/danglingparticiples.
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