Seahawks trade back into NFL draft, take LSU’s remarkable Stephen Sullivan
Stephen Sullivan still remembers his father beating his mother. He remembers his dad using cocaine in front of his mom, his brothers and him.
He can still see his mom and dad being taken away to jail. He remembers the fear of being taken from the hotel they’d been living in temporarily, the one from which his school bus picked him up every day. He can still feel the cold, scared nights trying to sleep under a freeway overpass.
Saturday, Sullivan, a tight end from LSU, reached where so many athletes dream of getting—years after being where no one should ever be.
“I kind of became a man on my own just from learning and watching. Watching coaches. Watching families, and things like that,” the newest Seahawks player said in an unforgettable Zoom interview online.
He spoke minutes after Seattle traded back into the end of the NFL draft to pick Sullivan in the seventh round.
“I’ve been through so much adversity,” he said. “I’ve stayed under a bridge a few nights before. I saw my mom and dad get incarcerated. I saw my dad do cocaine in front of my mom. I saw my dad beat my mom. I saw my brothers and my dad get in a fight.
“It’s just so much that I’ve been through.
“Every single day, I think about that and I think about my situation growing up. You can say that motivates me. It does, actually. It motivates me every single day. Just me thinking about my past and thinking about so much that I’ve been through, it’s a long time coming. It’s been some nights where I didn’t know where my next meal was going to come from, it’s been some nights where I didn’t know if I was going to have clean clothes for school. Just hearing my name called, it’s really a dream come true. I can’t really ask for nothing more.”
Sullivan was in grade school about a decade ago when his parents went to jail and he was sleeping under the bridge with his older brother. He lived with a little league coach for a while. Then with an aunt. The aunt’s daughter and Sullivan lived for a while in a trailer. Some days, they didn’t eat. He bounced between the Dallas-Fort Worth area and Louisiana.
“I was staying with my auntie, but she ended up moving out, and her kids ended up moving out. And it was me and her daughter then in a trailer,” Sullivan said. “Some nights, we didn’t have hot meals. Some nights we didn’t eat. Some nights we didn’t have clean clothes to go to school and things like that.”
He made it to high school, Donaldsonville High School in Donaldsonville, La.
“That’s when I met my mentor, Ms. Michelle. She helped out; she made sure that I ate and things like that,” he said.
Michelle Macloud was the school’s librarian.
He became all-state in football, a bigger, faster and better receiver than everyone he played. LSU gave him a football scholarship. He finally had his own place to live.
The 6-foot-5, 248-pound Sullivan became attractive to NFL scouts because of his big body and ability to split out wide and run quick routes. But the most catches he had in a season at LSU was only 23, with two touchdowns, in 2018. He won a national title last season as a part-time receiver for the loaded Tigers.
LSU coach Ed Orgeron is an old friend of Seahawks coach Pete Carroll; Carroll inherited Orgeron as a USC assistant when Carroll became the Trojans’ head coach in 2001. Orgeron stayed until after the 2004 college season when Mississippi made him its head coach.
Before January’s Senior Bowl showcase for college players in front of NFL scouts, Orgeron tipped off Carroll to Sullivan, the receiver’s impressive physical skills and remarkable background.
That included his college degree. Last August, he graduated from LSU. He is the first in his family with a college degree. His parents did not graduate from high school.
“I got connected, really, through Coach O. As we talked about his guys, and this story, he really lit up about this kid,” Carroll said. “So I had a special eye on him throughout the time, and was hoping we could figure out a way.”
Carroll told Sullivan at the Senior Bowl, “I’m going to make you a Seahawk.”
Saturday, he did.
With the seventh round and draft five picks from ending and Seattle out of choices for 2020, Seattle general manager John Schneider traded with Miami to get back into the draft. It was to expressly to take Sullivan with the 251st-overall pick in round seven.
“We couldn’t have waited a whole lot longer to pull it off,” Carroll said, chuckling. “Fortunately, John made a great move late, giving us a chance to get him in the program.
“He was SO excited. SO pumped up about—just like Eddie had said he would be. Ed told me he was going to be one of my favorite guys. ...
“And he’s a marvelous talent. Hopefully, we can find a way to make it come to life.”
Schneider said Seattle almost drafted Sullivan with their scheduled-to-be-final pick in the sixth round. But the promise of Florida wide receiver Freddie Swain as potentially the Seahawks’ new punt returner to reduce the load on lead wide receiver Tyler Lockett was too much to miss.
Sullivan was on the phone with his agent discussing multiple teams that wanted to sign him as a rookie free agent after the draft when Carroll and Schneider called. The Seahawks see him as a unique tight end/big wide receiver they’ve wanted to join bullish 2019 draft choice DK Metcalf. Sullivan will be competing with Jacob Hollister, Seattle’s smaller, 240-pound surprise contributor as a wide receiver-like tight end last season.
A video of the moment the Seahawks called Sullivan Saturday caught the big guy bending his 6-5 body in half, doubled over when he got the word he’d gone from sleeping under bridges to the NFL.
“I don’t even know what to say. It’s so, just...mind-blowing,” he said. “At first, I was a free agent five minutes ago. And then Seattle was picking me.
“It was crazy, man. It feels great. It feels like I am wanted.”
On the video, when the Seahawks called, a man next to him fell over, too.
“That was my best friend,” Sullivan said a few minutes later. “His family took me in during high school. His family took me in my sophomore year of high school, my freshman year of high school. The guy that you saw in the video, his name is Tyler Brown.
“I always used to go by his house just for meals to eat and things like that. One day, I just asked his mom if I could live with them. She took me in with open arms and she already had three sons and a husband. And she took me in with open arms. I moved in with them my sophomore year of high school, and I ended up staying with them my whole career in high school.
“I left high school early just to really get out of their house because I always felt like I was too much. She never mentioned that, she never complained. Not one time. There was just something in me that I felt like I wanted to get out of that situation I was in to just move on to the next chapter. That’s why I left high school early. He’s my best friend. His family took me in during high school. And they’re like my family now, for sure.”
This is the second consecutive year Schneider traded back into the draft to acquire a seventh-round pick he didn’t have. It was for slot wide receiver John Ursua in 2019.
Carroll said Sullivan “definitely has the ability at tight end to be split out.”
Tight end is a crowded pack on tight ends on the Seahawks.
Seattle drafted Stanford tight end Colby Parkinson in the fourth round earlier Saturday. The Seahawks signed Pro Bowl veteran Greg Olsen this offseason to a one-year, $7 million contract. They have Will Dissly returning from a torn Achilles tendon he sustained in October. They also re-signed popular veteran Luke Willson last month and brought back Hollister on a one-year deal.
Whatever. Sullivan will play the national anthem on a synthesizer if he has to. Whatever the Seahawks want and need him to do, to stick with them.
It was a little hard to comprehend it all for Sullivan late Saturday afternoon.
“I don’t know. I don’t know how you could put that into words,” he said, smiling.
Seahawks picks
Round 1 (pick 27): LB Jordyn Brooks, Texas Tech
Round 2 (48): EDGE Darrell Taylor, Tennessee
Round 3 (69): G Damien Lewis, LSU
Round 4 (133): TE Colby Parkinson, Stanford
Round 4 (144): RB DeeJay Dallas, Miami (Fla.)
Round 5 (148): EDGE Alton Robinson, Syracuse
Round 6 (214): WR Freddie Swain, Florida
Round 7 (251): TE Stephen Sullivan, LSU
This story was originally published April 25, 2020 at 4:15 PM.
