What’s next for Milloy?

For now, Seattle Seahawks safety Lawyer Milloy isn’t worrying about next season.

The 15-year NFL veteran from Tacoma will turn 38 in November, which is somewhere between old and ancient by NFL standards, will decide at some point over the next six or seven months if he wants to shoot for season No. 16, but right now he has more immediate things to take care of.

“What’s next for me is I’ve got a bucket list for my wife,” the former University of Washington All-American joked. “First is the garage, next is outside.”

And even when he finishes off that to-do list, Milloy probably won’t make any immediate decisions. But this much is clear — right now anyway, he doesn’t sound like somebody who is ready to retire even if the odds say he should have been out of football years ago.

“I’ll look back on my own personal season and address what I’m going to do moving forward, but I know I feel great,” he said. “I know that just getting to play Chicago in the second round of the playoffs wasn’t enough, not only for me but for the team, and that might be enough for me to try to compete for another spot on this team.”

If Milloy does come back, it would be, like he said, to compete for a spot on the team. After spending most of the 2009 season playing special teams for the Seahawks, many figured his career was over. But Milloy came back to play for head coach Pete Carroll, whom he also played for early in his career in New England. Not only did Milloy make the team, he won the starting job at strong safety and finished the season tied for second on the team with 88 tackles and also matched a career high with four sacks.

When Milloy re-signed with Seattle last April, it looked like he was coming in to mentor rookie Earl Thomas, not be a significant part of Seattle’s defense. And there is no doubt that Milloy did have a big influence on Thomas and the rest of the secondary, but he also started all 16 games next to Thomas in the defensive backfield. Over the course of the season, only Thomas and linebacker Lofa Tatupu played more snaps than Milloy according to personnel charts kept by Brian McIntrye of macsfootballblog.com.

“He’s an amazing individual,” said Carroll, who like Milloy is leaving the door open for Milloy to come back. “He’s an incredible competitor, just a marvelous mentality about maintaining his physicality and stuff. His body is phenomenal to be able to hold up this long and come out of this season feeling good and all that. We’ll talk about it. He’s one of my all-time favorite guys to compete with and we’ll go at this thing and see what he wants to do. We haven’t talked about it at all yet but I can’t imagine him not thinking that right now. He’s just too much of a competitor not to. We’ll see where all that is when we talk.”

If Milloy returns, he’ll likely do so at the veteran minimum with no guarantees of making the team. The Seahawks have a young safety in Kam Chancellor who may well take over as the starting strong safety, but after this season it wouldn’t be wise to write off Milloy’s chances.

A four-time Pro Bowler who has also won a Super Bowl, Milloy could walk away happy feeling like he has nothing to prove. He has started 214 games, an incredibly high number, particularly at a position as violent as safety, and is one of just 11 players in NFL history to record 20 sacks and 20 interceptions. But just because he could retire feeling like he has nothing to prove doesn’t mean Milloy will call it quits.

“I’m very happy, I can’t complain about anything,” he said. “My whole career has been outstanding; to last this long has been a blessing. But that desire is still inside of me. That’s all I can say right now. … To me, my age is just a number. The minute I start thinking about, do I want to play anymore, my age —that’s the time you start thinking more about retirement. And that hasn’t crossed my mind right now.”

No, for now Milloy’s mind in on more important things. Like taking care of that garage.

Herald Writer John Boyle: jboyle@heraldnet.com. For more Seahawks coverage, check out the Seahawks blog at heraldnet.com/seahawksblog