Russell Wilson FaceTimes with Damien Lewis just after Seahawks draft LSU guard in round 3
Russell Wilson already knows Damien Lewis is going to matter to the Seahawks this year. And for a while.
The Seahawks’ franchise quarterback picked up the phone Friday night and FaceTime connected with Lewis minutes after Seattle made the right guard from LSU its third-round choice in the NFL draft.
“Man, you ready?” the $140-million franchise quarterback asked Lewis.
“He was smiling,” Lewis said.
One of the new rookie’s three younger brothers was crying in the background.
Lewis’ response to the Super Bowl-winning Seahawks quarterback: “I’m ready to help you win a Super Bowl...
“I’m ready to make you happy.”
Lewis knows championships. He won major college football’s in January starting his 28th consecutive game on the best line in the college game in LSU’s national-title win over Clemson.
“I’m just going to bring that mean, nasty toughness. What I got. Don’t change, for nobody.”
The Seahawks traded down and picked up an extra pick this weekend to add their 19th offensive lineman to the roster. Some will have to go. Especially at guard.
It won’t be Lewis. Wilson wouldn’t have spent part of his Friday night talking to the rookie if the face of the franchise didn’t know Lewis was about to become a factor on Wilson’s offensive line that is changing yet again.
D.J. Fluker, the Seahawks’ starting right guard, is entering the final year of his contract. The team could save $3.7 million by releasing him. The 29-year-old veteran has missed eight games because of injury in his two seasons for Seattle.
How Schneider does draft business
The Seahawks traded down five spots out of the end of the second round into the top of the third before taking Lewis at 69th overall. Seattle picked up the second choice in round five on Saturday from the Panthers, and gave Carolina the 64th-overall choice, the final pick of round two.
It’s the way John Schneider does draft business.
Seattle’s GM traded up 11 places with the New York Jets in round two to get ready-for-the-NFL pass rusher Darrell Taylor from Tennessee. He gave up the 101st pick, at the bottom of round three, to do that. Then he turned around minutes later and traded back from his second pick of the second round to get back a third-round pick—32 places ahead of the one with which he entered Friday. On top of that he gained the second pick in round five on Saturday.
That recouped the fifth-round pick Seattle had sent to Washington last month to acquire starting cornerback Quinton Dunbar.
That’s dealin’. He’s now made 74 trades in 11 drafts as Seahawks GM.
Had to grow up quickly
The 6-foot-2, 327-pound Lewis is yet another mature-beyond-his-years Seahawks pick in this draft.
He’s 23 years old. He had zero offers from a four-year college out of Canton High School in Canton, Miss. So he went to play for Northwest Mississippi Community College.
While doing all that his father, Damien Dozier, was like the father of Seattle’s second-round pick Darrell Taylor: incarcerated through his son’s teen years. Lewis’ father was in prison on drug-related charges from when Lewis was in eighth grade until about the time he enrolled at LSU in 2018.
Damien Lewis became basically a father to his three younger brothers, now 17, 12 and 11, while Damien was in high school trying to get out of Canton.
“I had to grow up real early, you know,” Lewis said on a Zoom call from his Southern home Friday night. “At that time, I had my had two youngest brothers that, my father not being there most of my life, I had to grow up real early. I had to just set the tone for them, how to be a pro at everything. If they see me do it, they’ll do it.
“They are right here with me right now. My baby brother, he’s crying. ...It kind of touches him. I’m just real thankful for that, being in the position to help them.”
Carrying that weight, he started all 28 of his career games for Louisiana State. He was known as a “forklift” run blocker, according to one assessment by NFL.com. He just mauled defensive linemen on the interior of the line of scrimmage.
Some analysts have knocked his pass protection. But he fits the Seahawks’ trend under line coach Mike Solari the last few years and drafts of adding road graders as interior offensive linemen, massive, physical blockers who drive defenders’ face masks into the turf.
That includes Phil Haynes, a fourth-round choice last year. His rookie season was limited to almost nothing but injury rehabilitation from a sports-hernia surgery in 2019.
One gets the feeling Lewis is happy to add “he can’t pass block” as another chip to his huge shoulders as he continues his quest to make it from unrecruited junior-college player and teenage father figure to Seattle and the NFL.
“I’ve been overlooked my whole life,” he said.
“I’m going to put my soul into this.”
This story was originally published April 24, 2020 at 7:12 PM.
