Ryan Neal wanted to quit. Then Jamal Adams got hurt. Now Neal’s saving the needy Seahawks
Ryan Neal had just made one of the more unlikely plays in recent Seahawks history, the biggest play of his life.
And he was speechless.
“I honestly can’t even walk you through the past 24 hours,” he said last Sunday.
“I can’t even talk.”
Last month began with the Seahawks doing what the Philadelphia Eagles did to him in his first months in the league, what the Atlanta Falcons then did to him twice more. They cut him. No one wanted Neal. He went unclaimed through waivers. Seattle signed him back to where he seemed destined to always be, its practice squad. That’s where he was last season. That what he was on with Atlanta in 2018.
Last Saturday Neal was trudging into yet another fall weekend, thinking about another game he was not going to play. The former undrafted free agent from Southern Illinois University and native of Hammond, Indiana, was into his third season on an NFL practice squad. The 6-foot-3, 200-pound safety had played in just four games in two seasons. Just 51 career snaps, all on special teams covering kicks, chasing a dream that kept running away from him.
He wanted to quit. Not quit on another lost game weekend.
Quit football. Go back home to Indiana. Do something else, anything else. Start the rest of his life’s work, at age 24.
“Oh, yeah. Shout out to my fiancee,” Neal said this week, earnestly. “She heard it all. She got an earful of everything that I’ve been feeling, all of my emotions.
“My oldest brother, Mike (a former linebacker for the Green Bay Packers who is eight years older). My family (his the second-youngest of four brothers). You go through it so much and you keep getting doors shut on you, and you’re just like, ‘Man, when is it going to be that day? When is it going to pop?’”
That day was Sept. 27. Neal absolutely popped.
“I was walking into meetings thinking I was still on the practice squad,” he said he said of last Saturday.
“And the next thing I know...”
The call
Coach Pete Carroll and general manager John Schneider called Neal. They needed him up from the practice squad onto the roster for the home game against Dallas. Reserve safety Lano Hill suddenly woke up with a bad back. The Seahawks were using Neal as a practice-squad exemption above the normal active-roster limit of 53 players for last Sunday’s home game against Dallas.
Neal was only, finally, in uniform because of new NFL rules for roster in this unprecedented COVID-19 season. If it was any other year, he would still have been on the practice squad, back in team sweats for yet another game of doing nothing but watching.
The call was cool, but he was only insurance, right? A just in case. A backup to a backup. There was the chance Hill, who had practiced and wasn’t on any injury list all week, would be active for the game. And thus, Neal would not.
Seattle has a do-everything All-Pro at Neal’s position, strong safety. When the team made its splashy trade for Jamal Adams in July, sending the New York Jets two first-round draft choices plus veteran starter Bradley McDougald, another door slammed in Neal’s face. The biggest one yet.
No way he was going to play over Adams, or over Hill. So, after the sudden call-up last weekend, he hoped for a few snaps on special teams.
He got 19 of those against the Cowboys. Turned out, Hill was inactive.
Then early in the fourth quarter, Adams strained his groin so painfully the relentless star could barely walk. Carroll and defensive coordinator Ken Norton Jr. sent Neal, the practice-squad guy who wanted to quit, into Seattle’s besieged defense late in a one-score game.
He played the last 29 snaps. They were the first 29 plays on defense of his NFL career.
Dak Prescott had the Cowboys moving again, for the tying touchdown with less than a minute remaining. The Seahawks had allowed allowed 522 total yards. Prescott had 472 yards passing—the most a quarterback had ever thrown for against Seattle. Prescott had just moved Dallas swiftly from its own 25-yard line to the Seahawks 26, in just 91 seconds. Overtime seemed imminent.
On third down with 16 seconds to play, Prescott spun out of what should have been a sack by Seattle’s Benson Mayowa. The Cowboys’ quarterback squared his shoulders. He threw into the end zone, where two of his receivers were scrambling to get open. Given how Prescott’s other 56 passes had gone for Seattle’s defense, it felt like a tying touchdown.
Then the guy who’s gal told him not to quit, who was on the practice squad yet again just the day before, jumped and secured the game-ending interception on the first day he’d ever played defense in the NFL.
Russell Wilson continued his league record-breaking start to the season with five more touchdown passes. But it wasn’t Wilson, Adams, fellow All-Pro Bobby Wagner nor Pro Bowl cornerback Shaquill Griffin who ultimately assured Seattle’s 38-31 victory over the Cowboys.
It was Ryan Neal.
Ryan Neal?
“Ryan Neal ate one up for us,” Carroll said after the game.
Yeah, after three years of wanting and waiting, Neal was beyond hungry.
“The only thing that I can say is, God is good,” he said minutes after his heroic play. “You stay faithful and you stay committed to the process.
“And there’s been times when I’ve wanted to quit, But you just don’t. You keep going.
“And you never, ever know when that moment can be yours. That was the one thing that kept me waking up in the morning.”
Not done yet
Neal woke up in the Seahawks’ hotel north of downtown Miami Saturday with another, even bigger spark.
Days after his first plays on defense in an NFL regular-season game, he is preparing to make his first pro start. Adams is still hurting. The team declared him out for this weekend. Hill’s back isn’t much better than it was last weekend. He’s questionable to play. So it’s likely to be Neal next to Quandre Diggs as the safety pairing for the Seahawks (3-0) against the Miami Dolphins (1-2) on Sunday in steamy south Florida.
To backfill the safety position, the Seahawks called up former Packers starter and first-round pick Damarious Randall as an exemption to the active roster for the Miami game, the same route Neal took to playing last weekend. Randall signed this week to the practice squad as a free agent.
Neal isn’t gaining just pride and prestige by finally sticking on the active roster.
In 2018 with the Falcons he earned $7,600 per week while on Atlanta’s practice squad. Last season his practice-squad minimum salary went up to $8,000 weekly.
He got $8,400 for each of the first two weeks of this season, while still waiting on Seattle’s practice squad. But with his call up for the Cowboys game then the team signing him Tuesday to the 53-man roster for the Miami game, Neal is earning $88,235.30. That’s two game checks prorated on the minimum salary of $750,000 for a player with two years of official service time in the NFL, as Neal has.
From $8,400 to $88,000 in one week? That’ll make for a nicer wedding with his understanding fiancee.
And this isn’t likely to be a one-week dream that ends after Miami. Carroll hinted on Friday before the team left for Florida that the Seahawks keep the anxious Adams out next week, too, to rest the groin for their home game against Minnesota Oct. 11. Seattle has a bye after that game.
That would give Adams from his injury Sept. 27 to the Seahawks’ game Oct. 25 at Arizona to heal for a stretch of tough games: at the improved Cardinals, home versus defending NFC-champion San Francisco, then at undefeated Buffalo and home against the division-rival Los Angeles Rams.
And that would give Neal almost a month in the relative luxury of finally playing on defense in real games, making real money.
He’s got a prime chance to impress, too, starting Sunday against the Dolphins and 37-year-old quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick. It’s not like those Seahawks playing before Neal in the secondary were ripping it up. Seattle has allowed 1,292 yards passing so far in 2020. That’s the most in the first three games of a season in NFL history.
“Even when I was on the practice squad before, I was just one step away,” Neal said. “With that in mind, like coach always says, ‘The closer you get, the harder you run.’
“At the times I felt like quitting, I’m just like, ‘No. I’m going to get back up. We’re going to put a smile on that face and we’re going to run harder, because we’re almost up here.’
“And lo and behold, it’s (now). I’m in awe right now. I can’t even put it into words.
“I’m just thankful.”
This story was originally published October 3, 2020 at 1:46 PM.
