RENTON — Seneca Wallace arrived in Seattle in 2003 as an unlikely prospect. A Heisman Trophy candidate at Iowa State, he was considered too small at 5 feet 11 to be an NFL quarterback. When the Seahawks drafted him in the fourth round that year, it was a surprise. Many teams wondered if he might make a better wide receiver or kick returner.
Coach Mike Holmgren and Jim Zorn, now the coach of the Washington Redskins, saw the potential as a quarterback, and Zorn immediately pushed him to get better. Wallace had never met anyone like Zorn, with his eccentricities and silly drills. Unlike Matt Hasselbeck, he knew nothing about the offense, knew little really about playing quarterback. Zorn realized it and challenged him in meetings, forcing him to expand upon vague answers. Wallace balked.
Several times, Zorn remembered, he had to stop film reviews, flip on the lights and say: “Seneca, oh, by the way, I’m for you. I’m not against you.”
To Zorn it seemed Wallace had tremendous mistrust. “He had this idea of what a coach of the past was and how it should be or could be,” Zorn said. And that coach was not someone who demanded complex answers to an offense Wallace still wasn’t sure he completely knew.
Zorn took him to the same early morning workouts he ran for Hasselbeck in 2002. And just like with Hasselbeck, he used those walks back to talk to Wallace about the things he needed to learn, to practice, to understand.
The breakthrough came two years later when, on a whim, he suggested Wallace take a class to learn how to study. He told the quarterback he had done something similar as a player and found it helpful. Wallace agreed, took the class and found it a better idea than he could have imagined. His grasp of the offense improved.
This year, when Hasselbeck went down with a back injury, Wallace got the first significant playing time of his career. The results were mixed. Because the Seahawks were beset with injuries to their wide receivers, Wallace didn’t have many players to whom he could throw. He lost three of the four games he started despite being intercepted only once.
On a recent morning, Zorn leaned back in his chair at the Redskins’ headquarters and wistfully gazed out the window.
“I really wish I could have been there when Seneca got serious time on the field,” he said. “I kind of feel like all of our time was spent preparing him for play, but now there are a lot of things to learn when you finally get on the field and you see what it’s like. You can improve a guy when he absolutely has playing time, when he’s not getting pulled for nobody — it’s his game.”
Told this, Wallace smiled.
“That’s the guy he is,” he said. “We had a good bond. After all is said and done, I can’t wait to see him.”
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
