Lakewood’s ex-Seahawks clutch receiver Jermaine Kearse retires from a self-made NFL career
Jermaine Kearse’s dream football career ended the way it began, the way it pretty much always was.
His way. And at home.
The Lakewood native, former Lakes High School star, University of Washington standout and creator of some of the biggest plays in Seahawks history as their Super Bowl-winning wide receiver announced his retirement from his self-made NFL career on Tuesday.
The 30-year-old Kearse made his announcement on his social-media accounts. He has been out of football living in Newcastle with his wife Marisa and their daughter Rylee Rae since the end of the 2018 season.
“After 8 years playing in the NFL, I’m leaving the game feeling extremely grateful and content with what I was able to accomplish out there on the field not only for myself, but my family as well,” Kearse wrote on his Instagram page. “Going through some extreme highs and some extreme lows has taught me a lot about myself and by the grace of God he was able to pull me through the rough times and in the end all those experiences were all worth it.”
As his announcement shows, Jermaine Kearse is real.
“The example he set was just tremendous for kids,” Dave Miller, Kearse’s coach at Lakes, told The News Tribune’s Jon Manley Tuesday. “We have a lot of the opposite. When you have a local kid who’s very humble and does things with class, it was just so powerful for our kids to be able to thrive on that.”
Kearse began playing football with his brother Jamaal since they were growing up in Lakewood and their dad David was an Army sergeant at neighboring Fort Lewis, now Joint Base Lewis McChord.
Jermaine starred Miller at Lakes High School before he and Jamaal played together at the University of Washington. They made Huskies history in 2011 when they began the first brothers to each score a touchdown in a UW, at Utah. Their mother Angelika was in the stadium in Salt Lake City that day to see it. Their father died in 2007, suddenly, after falling ill.
The Seahawks signed Kearse in 2012 as an undrafted rookie free agent. Kearse then made his own NFL career, the hard way as a rookie special-teams player. That first spring he and a rookie quarterback named Russell Wilson formed a tight bond by playing pitch and catch on the side fields long after minicamp practices ended.
Now-retired Seahawks Super Bowl-champion and Pro Bowl receiver Doug Baldwin wrote online the day in 2017 that Seattle traded Kearse to the New York Jets for Pro Bowl defensive lineman Sheldon Richardson: “Football aside, this man is my brother and nothing can or will change ever change that.”
In 2013, Kearse had moved from rookie special-teams player just trying to make the team to a trusted target of Wilson. Kearse had four touchdown catches in 2013. He then had some of the most famous plays in Seahawks postseason history.
His catch on a post route in overtime of the NFC championship game against Green Bay on Jan. 18, 2015, after interceptions thrown by Wilson earlier in the game off Kearse’s hands and chest, sent Seattle into Super Bowl 49.
In that Super Bowl Kearse got the Seahawks into, two weeks later, the former undrafted free agent made a stupendous catch trapping Wilson’s long sideline pass that had been tipped by a New England Patriots defender against his lower leg while on the ground inside the 5-yard line with a minute left.
It would still be known as one of the greatest catches in Super Bowl history, if not for what happened next. Most people forget Kearse’s gem because of Wilson’s infamous interception from the 1-yard line in the final seconds kept Seattle from a second consecutive NFL title.
What made Kearse so popular in the community during his time with the Seahawks, beyond the fact he’s from here?
How often and how much he has given back, to Lakewood, to Lakes, to his Pacific Northwest home.
“He made a great impact in our community, with our youth football program, military families,” Miller said. “I think his heart will always be (with the military). He’s made as much of an impact as you can imagine. Mentally, emotionally, financially — whatever he could give, he was always really good about giving that.
In the spring of 2016 he signed a $13.5 million extension with Seattle. As the deal started going down, Kearse got a call that prompted him to uncharacteristically cancel an appearance at a robotics event for grade-school-aged kids and up at Graham-Kapowsin High School.
Kearse was on the cusp of signing his second NFL contract, the big-money one for which anyone who wears a helmet and shoulder pads aspires.
Yet Kearse’s conscience bothered him about missing the robotics event in his native Pierce County. So he called a teacher who’d led the kids to the event.
“We’ve got some pretty resilient kids here who miss you,” the surprised teacher said on speakerphone to Kearse.
She passed her cell phone around a semicircle of giddy, even-more-surprised kids seated on a floor in the high school. One boy was wearing a blue Seahawks game jersey with “Kearse, 15” on the back.
“Where did you go?” the boy asked almost in a whisper, gasping that he was speaking to his hero.
“I wish I could be with you guys,” Kearse replied to him and all. “I’m sorry I couldn’t make it. I hope you guys do fantastically and have a great time.”
This story was originally published September 29, 2020 at 11:57 AM.
