Assured Tyler Lockett doesn’t need more money or praise: ‘I’m a healthier type of hungry’
Russell Wilson thinks Tyler Lockett is “magical.”
Shane Waldron thinks Lockett has “God’s gift.”
Last season, Lockett set a Seahawks record for a season with 100 catches. This March, he signed a four-year contract worth up to $69.2 million that guaranteed him $37 million. To hear him tell it, that’s $37 million more than he truly needs, beyond what he’s already earned in seven years in the NFL with Seattle.
Entering the Seahawks’ game Sunday at the Minnesota Vikings, Lockett is off to the most explosive two-game start to a season of his stand-out career.
Yet Lockett doesn’t care what Wilson, Waldron, or anyone, thinks. He doesn’t care how big his contract is.
“When I go back home, I don’t need as much money as I have made to be happy,” Lockett said this week. “When you come here and are in the atmosphere of what it’s like to be in this one percent, nothing is enough. You always want more. You want to be this or that.
“I’m learning how to be content, but I’m still hungry. I’m a healthier type of hungry.
“I’m not trying to eat this craziness. I’m trying to digest things in a much healthier way, so I can enjoy this stuff for what it really is rather than being like ‘Man, I need a good game to be happy’.
“I don’t need a good year to feel good about myself — but that’s what this stuff makes you want to have.”
Overlooked, as he likes it
No, Lockett is not the typical 21st century professional athlete.
He turns 29 on Tuesday. He’s a poet. He writes. He records sessions of spoken word.
He’s made two, ridiculous, over-the-shoulder catches like Willie Mays in each of this season’s first two games, one for a touchdown in the opener at Indianapolis.
He was thought to be too small and slight at 5 feet 10 and 182 pounds to be anything more than perhaps a kick returner in the NFL, after a record-setting college career at Kansas State.
Whatever. Lockett is one of the league’s most overlooked stars.
He was an All-Pro and a Pro Bowl selection his rookie season, as a kick returner. He’s since become innately connected with Wilson, and one of the NFL’s most consistently productive wide receivers.
Since teammate Doug Baldwin retired following the 2018 season, Lockett has had 194 receptions, 2,389 yards and 21 touchdowns in 34 regular-season games. That an average of six receptions and more than 70 yards receiving per game.
Through two weeks this season, Lockett has 12 receptions for 278 yards and three touchdowns (tied for second-most in the league). The yards are fourth-most in the NFL, and 119 more than Lockett’s previous most through two games of a season, in 2020.
Plus, Lockett routinely makes subtle plays he makes to create points. He created a teammate’s touchdown last weekend against the Titans, in the second quarter after his 63-yard touchdown pass from Wilson.
Lockett saw Wilson’s pass sailing beyond him uncatachable, so he expertly slowed up while being tightly covered on a post route into the end zone. Tennessee defensive back Adoree Jackson, who was still looking at the ball, plowed Lockett to the ground.
Instead of a third and 10 with 21 seconds left in the half, the Seahawks got a first and goal from the 1-yard line, thanks to the pass-interference penalty on Jackson that Lockett deftly created. Instead of a likely field goal, Chris Carson scored a touchdown on the next play. Seattle took a 24-9 lead.
“Tyler, he’s just magical out there to be honest with you. He just understands the game,” Wilson said. “Any great receiver, they see the game in the eyes of the quarterback. I think that’s really what he does extremely well.
“Obviously, he catches everything you throw him. That’s a key component. He knows how to get open. I think it’s the intellectual part of the game. He’s a quiet guy, for the most part at least, but when we’re out on the field he’s speaking my language. I think that’s the beautiful thing in that game.”
But all that’s only a small part of Tyler Lockett.
His sense of himself is refreshing in a world where everyone is trying to get more, in a profession where players constantly compare themselves and their contracts to the next guy. Lockett said three years ago he was content with the first three-year contract extension he got with Seattle, worth up to $31 million with $11 million guaranteed. He called that life-changing money then, cash that set him and his family for life in 2018.
He seriously considered skipping his record-setting 2020 season because of concerns he might contract COVID-19 and infect family members and friends he often returns to in his hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma.
He routinely returns there, to give back to Tulsa Public Schools and the community that formed him. He says many of his friends remain ones he met at Carver Middle School in Tulsa, 2,000 miles from where he lives and works from July through January. He goes back to Tulsa to tell children the challenges of living — specifically living as a Black man or woman — in America.
‘A great human being’
Waldron, the first-time play caller, has been Lockett’s offensive coordinator for only a few months. What has surprised him about his unique receiver?
“It’s more so just how great of a person he is,” Waldron said this week, “because I’ve always had a great amount of respect for him from afar. He’s such a great route runner, and always has been. He has great natural hands, his footwork along the sidelines, his ability to create separation at the top of his routes even though he isn’t the biggest guy in the world. He just has that nifty feel as a route runner.
“The person, now being around him, he’s a great human being. He’s really caring, really into it in all walks of life. He has a great leadership style where guys listen to him because he has great things to say.
“Then, his practice habits and his work habits match up with how he is as a person.”
Lockett genuinely appreciates that, far more than the many social-media messages and atta-boys he gets from fans, the glowing stories he gets in the media.
“That’s what helps me at least be in a good head space,” he said, “otherwise I need y’all to talk about me before I feel better about myself. You all do a great job, but I don’t want my worth to be found in people, or things, or life, or my girlfriend. I want it to be found in God , so that’s what I focus on because that’s what is most important to me.”
Lockett dispenses this sense of self-assurance and perspective inside the Seahawks locker room, to any teammate who takes the time to hear it. He’s also the team’s union representative to the NFL Players’ Association, serving as a liaison and advisor for teammates on union matters.
Personal matters matter more to him.
“I was telling one of the guys that if you do badly, you don’t have to worry about talking to anybody. You just have to figure out how to get better and keep moving,” Lockett said. “If you are doing pretty good, you still don’t have to worry about talking to people. As soon as you start doing great, now you start to get social-media attention, everybody is posting stuff about you and then you have stand up here and be able to talk. It makes it harder to find that me time, to be able to get away from that stuff.
“All you see is that he broke this (record), he’s doing that, and you don’t want to get caught up in that kind of stuff. You start to lose focus on what’s important.”
On the field, Lockett believes he’s thriving in Waldron’s new offense because of the freedom it gives him to change routes and plays, often during them, depending on what the defense is giving him and Wilson.
“I feel like I’m back how I was a Kansas State,” Lockett said. “For me, I felt like I have been given a little more freedom to be able to do a lot of stuff that I did back in college. I haven’t had that freedom like I used to, so now I’m more comfortable in being able to do the stuff I used to do because that’s how I have always played.
“I had to change my game up when I came here because it didn’t fit how we did certain stuff, but I learned how to play where it fit more of what we did.”
Waldron said the improvisation in Lockett’s routes is by his design.
“I can’t speak for what he’s done in the past. But as far as what he’s been able to do now, just having the ability to run different routes and put different sauce on those routes,” Waldron said. “So they might be how they are drawn up on a piece of paper, but not exactly how they are run on the field, especially when coverages play out a little differently.
“He has such a good mental clock of understanding the timing and rhythm of plays so he can use his natural ability to get open which may be different than a straight line on a piece of paper.”
All that’s well and good for Lockett. Just do him a favor: be quiet about it.
Let him be one of the most unheralded top receivers in the sport.
“I feel like the only thing that is different (right now) is that everybody is starting to talk about me,” Lockett said.
“I just want to chill, not be in front of the camera, and just do me.”
