DK Metcalf bond with Russell Wilson goes beyond football, ready for bigger Seahawks role
DK Metcalf is just 22. He is only entering his second NFL season.
Yet he’s already way wise to the value of being close with Russell Wilson.
Metcalf is smart enough to know the way to maximize his freakish physical skills—he’s a 6-foot-4, 229-pound wide receiver with miniscule body fat and 4.33-second speed in the 40-yard dash—is to bond tightly to the guy who throws his passes. That’s the Seahawks’ $140 million franchise quarterback.
That’s why Metcalf works out with Wilson extra after most practices at team headquarters in Renton. It’s why Metcalf flew to California to work out with Wilson this June for the second consecutive offseason. Last year they trained at UCLA, getting up at 5:30 a.m. for workouts. This spring into summer it was at the QB’s private practice field, even during the coronavirus pandemic.
“We were socially distancing,” Metcalf said, dryly.
Seahawks coach Pete Carroll said Metcalf and Wilson worked out together for at least a month. Metcalf declined to specify how long.
“We got to work out quite a bit,” he said, with a grin.
But Metcalf wants you to know he is close with Wilson for more than catching passes.
“It goes further than football,” Metcalf said Thursday on a Zoom online call from Seahawks training camp at team headquarters in Renton.
“Football is only a short period of my life. I am going to build relationships while I’m here that are going to last a lifetime.”
Wilson has been wowed by Metcalf since their first minicamp practices in the spring of 2019. Wilson’s stayed in awe during their pre-dawn workouts at UCLA last summer. Past the minor knee surgery the rookie receiver had last August. Through the NFL rookie playoff records Metcalf set in Seattle’s win at Philadelphia in the NFC wild-card playoffs in January.
Metcalf has particularly amazed Wilson with his fiendish competitiveness and trash-talking. Last summer, before the rookie had even played his first preseason game in the NFL, Wilson likened Metcalf to an NBA legend.
“You know, I compare DK to Lebron,” Wilson said.
Um...Lebron James?
“He was talking all this trash,” Wilson said of Metcalf. “And he looks like him, kind of, as big as he is.”
Wilson is notorious for his #NoTime2Sleep postings on social media. He’s worked out and brought a trainer along on his family vacations. After he sprained his knee in a 2016 game against San Francisco and doctors told him he should stay out four weeks, Wilson flew his physical therapist and masseuse up from California to stay in his home. His PT woke him up on the hour each night to rehabilitate the knee.
He never missed a practice, let alone a game. He still hasn’t.
Yet ask Metcalf who is the harder worker, Wilson or him, and the wide receiver responds more quickly than when he runs a slant route against a blitz.
“I don’t think anybody can outwork me,” Metcalf said.
He wasn’t smiling.
When Carroll talks about Metcalf, the 68-year-old coach raves on about his young receiver as if he was another son.
Their bond is obviously a tad different than Metcalf’s is with Wilson. And not just because Carroll and Metcalf famously challenged each other by taking their shirts off together at their first meeting. That was in an Indianapolis hotel at the 2019 NFL scouting combine.
Metcalf, a first-round talent, slid to the bottom of round two in that 2019 draft. Teams were concerned a doctor had told Metcalf the previous fall his football career was over because of a broken bone in his neck.
Metcalf got a second opinion, recovered—and became a Seahawk, when Carroll and general manager John Schneider traded up back into the second round to draft him.
“What a great kid. I’m so fired up for him,” Carroll said this week. “He had so much to prove in his first year, because he’s a great competitor and he had a chip on his shoulder which was huge. He wanted to prove that he belonged, and that he could be a star.
“He did everything he could do in his first year. Strong. Bright. Tough. Consistent. Applied himself. Made the plays, and overcame the disappointments of the plays he couldn’t make, at times, that were well within his range.
“He’s going to be better this year. He had an incredible offseason. He spent, I don’t know, at least a month with Russell working out. They found a way to do it. They had a phenomenal summer, in that regard.
“What gives him a chance to be a really exciting player is his mentality. He knows exactly who he is. He knows where he’s come from. He knows what it’s all about. He’s not going to let anybody get in the way of him being all he can be. Shoot, that’s all we can ever ask.”
Seahawks offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer is going to ask more of Metcalf in 2020. Metcalf’s likely to line up in more positions than the on-the-line, X split end opposite the tight end he mostly was in his rookie season.
“But now we know we can move him around. We can ask him to do different stuff,” Carroll said. “We were hesitant because he was a young player, and all. We weren’t sure if he was able to handle stuff. We know now.
“He is really a bright football player. And he’s got flexibility. And he blocks. And he can rip down the field. So, we hope to just use him more than ever.”
Entering year two, is Metcalf a Pro Bowl or even All-Pro receiver in the making?
That takes us to what Metcalf says is the biggest lesson he’s learned from Wilson.
“Nothing is going to be handed to you,” Metcalf recited from his quarterback. “If you want to be great you have to go get it.”
Carroll thinks Metcalf is about to go get it.
“He’s here to do something special, now,” his coach said. “There’s nothing about anything that he’s done that doesn’t make it screamin’ that he wants to do something really special.
“I tell ya, he’s a beautiful part of this team. I can’t wait to see it go.”
This story was originally published August 6, 2020 at 3:42 PM.
