More than Jadeveon Clowney expected in Seahawks debut season: more wins, more pain
Jadeveon Clowney leaned forward through his pain and smiled, for one of his few times in a while.
The Seahawks’ top pass rusher had just played a full game of chasing Vikings, banging into offensive linemen, sprinting 20 yards to force a fumble and much more. He did all that with a painful core-muscle injury that he had to talk a specialist out of operating on a week before Monday night’s game.
Then the native southerner from the University of South Carolina who played for the Houston Texans until his trade to Seattle Sept. 1 was asked if he knew these Seahawks, way out here in the NFL equivalent of South Alaska, were this good.
He grinned.
“Nah,” the three-time Pro Bowl defensive end said. “I knew Russell (Wilson) was good. I knew they had some good players.
“But I didn’t know it could be this good.”
This good is 10-2 and in first place in the NFC West, holding the second seed in the conference’s playoff race with four games remaining in the regular season. Entering Sunday night’s game at the Los Angeles Rams (7-5), Seattle is on track to have a bye past the first round of the postseason and at least one home playoff game, in the divisional round.
Yet Clowney and other Seahawks think the league is still sleeping on Seattle.
Part of that may be true.
Part of that may be the modern athlete’s intense desire to find every slight, real or imagined, and turn it into a motivational chip.
“People still don’t think we are as good as we are. I can see that,” Clowney said following his team’s rally with 24 unanswered points past the Minnesota Vikings.
It was Seattle’s fifth consecutive victory and eighth in nine games.
“We are just letting these people say we aren’t that good. And we just keep getting these wins, unexpected wins, that no one expects us to win games.”
Listening to Clowney, seeing him move through his pain, he sounds and appears like he’s on borrowed time. He is.
He asked Dr. William Meyers to give him time when he visited the specialist in Philadelphia for an examination for his abdominal injury Nov. 22. Clowney acknowledged last week that when players go see Meyers—Doug Baldwin, Marshawn Lynch and other previous Seahawks among them...
“They usually have surgery,” Clowney finished.
“And I told them to hold that off. So now I am holding that off and trying to finish the season.
“If there were a lot of games left, it’d be different. But we ain’t got many. Hopefully, five, six. Just told them, ‘I think I can get through those and help this team.’”
Clowney told Meyers to hold off on abdominal surgery he may get after the season so he could finish this one with the Seahawks—and finish his expiring contract. So Meyers prescribed treatment instead. That work so pained Clowney initially he missed the Nov. 24 game at the Eagles then much of practices last week.
“I’ve just got to push through it,” he said. “In football, I don’t think nobody is 100 percent (healthy) after the first game, even that, preseason, training camp. So I don’t think anybody’s looking forward to me being 100.
“But when you are out there, you play hard. Give everything you got.”
Monday night, sore to the core, he played 43 of the 55 defensive snaps. That was 13 percent above his season average of 65 percent of plays this season.
Did playing so much through the pain set him back for the rest of the season? Is he worse off now than if he hadn’t played against the Vikings?
“Injuries, they are a part of the game. Sometimes you can play through them. Sometimes you can’t. Right now, I’m just trying to give my team all that I’ve got. It’s everything I’ve got dealing with that,” he said.
The most important guy in the most important position group to the Seahawks’ fortunes this month and season is relying on adrenaline and want-to to get him through this stretch run.
Clowney’s night began Monday by pogo-sticking around CenturyLink Field pregame. He yelled with teammates. He exhorted the roaring home crowd. He carried that juice through his three tackles—two of them crunching hits near the goal line—one tackle for loss, one hit on quarterback Kirk Cousins and a forced fumble against the Vikings.
Clowney’s task: duplicating that for four more games this month plus in the playoffs, with core abdominal muscles that should be doing anything but the violence of professional football to heal right now.
“I’m hoping that the energy level keeps me up, and the crowd, all that plays a big part,” he said. “I’m trying to give my teammates everything I can offer them, and try to hopefully win the football game.”
Fact is, the Seahawks need Clowney to get to the Super Bowl.
His five tackles, one sack, five of Seattle’s 10 hits on San Francisco quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo, a forced fumble and a fumble recovery sparked this late-season surge by the Seahawks’ pass rush.
The sudden increase in pressure on QBs has resulted in 10 takeaways for Seattle’s defense in the last three games. The Seahawks are plus-10 in turnover margin. That’s the third-best mark in the NFL this season.
It’s the most important statistic in football. Being double digits on the plus side of it often wins championships.
“It’s the perfect time, too,” said linebacker K.J. Wright, the longest-tenured Seahawk at nine years. “It’s where you start separating yourselves in December. Teams stop falling by the wayside.
“We look tremendous with the run game. Defense getting all these turnovers, looking fantastic. We’re gelling. We’re vibing really well together.
“We’ve just got to continue. We got a lot more games left. We’re trying to get to first place.”
But Ziggy Ansah, the veteran whom Seattle signed in April and was supposed to be the team’s bookend edge rusher with Clowney, is hurting again. Coach Pete Carroll said on his weekly day-after radio show Tuesday with Seattle’s KIRO AM Ansah’s surgically repaired shoulder “is a problem.”
Ansah left Monday night’s game late in the fourth quarter with his right shoulder slumped and right arm hanging limply at his side. Carroll said late Monday night it was a stinger, nerve irritation. Carroll’s comment Tuesday suggests it could be a longer-term issue related to the surgery the 30-year-old end had 12 months ago that ended his time with Detroit.
“Ziggy’s shoulder is a problem,” Carroll told KIRO AM Tuesday. “But he bounced back from it and he did recover from the stinger, so we’ll see. He’s been nursing the shoulder all along from last year and we’ll have to see how it goes going forward.”
So it could be Clowney leading an inexperienced group of rush ends through the end of the season: Quinton Jefferson, Rasheem Green, Shaquem Griffin—and rookie L.J. Collier.
Remember him? The first-round pick was inactive for the fifth time in seven games Monday but would get more chances if Ansah’s shoulder remains a problem.
One play Monday night suggested the 6-foot-5, 255-pound Clowney’s abdominal injury wasn’t limiting his effectiveness and freakish athleticism. He showed that perhaps even with the pain he could approach the domination he displayed when he was the NFC defensive player of the week for his demolition of the 49ers last month.
In the final minute of the second quarter, Clowney sprinted 20 yards down field to force a fumble at end of a screen pass to and run by Dalvin Cook. The Vikings recovered the ball and got a field goal two plays later for a 17-10 lead at halftime. But the play was an encouraging sign for rest of this season as Clowney and the Seahawks manage his injury.
“That’s just me, hustling to the ball. Just don’t pay the injury no attention,” he said. “Whatever I’m dealing with, just run to the ball. When you are out there playing, man, you are just out there playing for your teammates. When that ball’s moving, in my head it’s: ‘Just get to the ball. Don’t worry about injuries.’
“So I’m running to the ball, trying to punch it out. That’s how we all were trained. That’s how we practiced. That’s the mindset of this team. It’s what we do. Chase the ball, and nobody quits on a play. It ain’t over until they fall down. So, that’s just what we do.”
This story was originally published December 4, 2019 at 7:25 AM.
