After months of pain, familiar “refreshing energy” for Doug Baldwin entering Seahawks playoffs
Doug Baldwin is back in the playoffs with three words.
Happy New Year.
“It’s a refreshing feeling in some ways,” the Seahawks’ top wide receiver said Wednesday, three days before they play at the Dallas Cowboys in the wild-card round of the NFC postseason. “The playoffs, to me it just starts everything over again. Your mindset starts over again. Everything that’s happened in the past, we’ve put that behind us and we’ve focused on what we can control.”
Baldwin, 30, was so willing and eager to share his sense of renewal and energy, he was telling the Seahawks’ equipment guys about it on Tuesday.
“I just feel so much more vibrant. The energy is there because I know it’s playoff time,” he said. “We look forward to these moments. And I’m not saying that we treat them differently. I’m just saying that there’s a certain energy when you get into the tournament.
“It’s undeniable.”
So is the fact it’s been a long time for Baldwin to feel refreshed, renewed—heck, to feel anything other than pain.
His knee injury kept him out of almost the entire preseason, from the end of July until Aug. 27. Baldwin then missed two of the first three games of the regular season with that, including Seattle’s home win over Dallas in week three. Those were the first games he’d missed in 6 1/2 years. Russell Wilson’s favorite target the last seven years played on for months through another knee injury.
Baldwin said the night he had seven catches against Green Bay Nov. 15 was the first time he hadn’t felt pain in one of his knees since August.
But then, a groin injury. That eventually kept him out of the win over Minnesota in early December. Wilson said the offense missed Baldwin, and it looked like it. Wilson had his worst night passing of his career in that win over the Vikings: 10 for 20, 72 yards and a horrid red-zone interception. His passer rating of 37.9 against Minnesota was the lowest he’s had in an NFL game. The rest of the season he set a career high with a rating of 110.9.
By the end of the month, Baldwin had a second groin injury, more toward his hip. Baldwin said that injury was a combination of many ailments from throughout the season.
His seven-catch, 126-yard game with a touchdown in the win over Kansas City Dec. 23 that clinched Seattle’s sixth postseason berth in seven years showed Baldwin was back. Back to being Wilson’s trusted man on third downs.
“It’s huge to have Doug and have him healthy and the things that he can do,” Wilson said. “As you guys saw in the Kansas City game, he’s as good as it gets in the National Football League. He’s special—Tyler (Lockett), as well. To have those two guys and then the rest of the receivers and playmakers that we have on our team...Doug being healthy, we’ve played a lot of football together.
“We’ve been through the fire. We’ve been able to make a lot of amazing plays and do some special things in big moments, and he knows how to make those plays. He’s special in that way. He makes his layups. He makes his 3-pointers. And he makes his jump shots, too. There’s nothing that he can’t do, and he’s a leader for us, too, as well. He brings a certain energy and fire and passion to the game that you can feel, that you can sense when he walks in the room.
“He’s a special player for us and we’re excited that he’s healthy and playing great right now. We’re excited about going to the playoffs with him.”
But he’s not fully healthy. Not yet. Baldwin showed up last week on the practice report with a new shoulder injury. This week he’s taken practices off to rest his knee.
“It is what it is, in terms of injuries,” he said. “But it doesn’t matter now. There’s no more excuses. We’ve got to do what we’ve got to do.
“We’ve got four more games.”
Yes, four. That’s Saturday’s wild-card round, the divisional playoffs at either New Orleans or the Los Angeles Rams Jan. 12 or 13, then the NFC championship the following weekend and Super Bowl 53 in Atlanta on Feb. 3.
Last month, when the Seahawks were a win away from the playoffs in a supposed rebuilding season with an almost entirely new coaching staff, offensive approach and defense, Baldwin said: “I think as it’s always been, when we get in the tournament we know we have a shot. And with this team, with the young mindset, with the underdog mentality and attitude, and with the true ability that we have, I think that we genuinely have a shot.
“Once we get in the tournament, it’s going to be very hard to beat us.”
Why not be confident? Baldwin and Wilson have won eight of the 12 postseason games they’ve played in their career for Seattle.
“I think the biggest thing is the emotional part of it,” the two-time Pro Bowl receiver said. “You feel like you’re in the playoffs, so it doesn’t matter what’s thrown at you. You can handle it.
“There’s a newness or a refreshing feeling to it, because you feel like you’re going into a tournament where anything can happen, and the only thing that really matters is winning. So you put aside everything that you’ve been dealing with in the past subconsciously and you can go for it.”
He and linebacker K.J. Wright, 29 and also coming off a regular season full of pain and missed games (11), are the longest-tenured Seahawks. They’ve had the regular trips to the postseason, the consecutive Super Bowls, the ring he, Wright and the Seahawks won in Feb. 2014. They’ve had Pro Bowl selections and, in Baldwin’s case, social activism that suggests he could have a future in politics.
Baldwin said last month he’s thought about what his future with the team may or may not be beyond this season.
Yet he’s not thinking about his future or his legacy now. Not with his present: another playoff run, starting Saturday night in Texas.
It’s lesson he said he learned from Derek Jeter at the end of the New York Yankees captain’s career in 2014.
“To be completely honest with you, I don’t think about that,” Baldwin said of his and the era of Seahawks football’s place in history. “Derek Jeter had a quote that stood out to me when he was talking about his retirement. He said that he wished he could go back and enjoy the moments. But the truth of the matter is—and he further explained this—was that you can’t enjoy those moments. You can’t think about the legacy while you’re in it. You have to focus on the task at hand.
“And that’s what we’re going to do. When it’s all said and done, yeah, I think that all of us will come back and look at all the significant accomplishments that we’ve made as an organization and as a unit of receivers.
“But right now, we’re focused on Dallas.”
