Tyler Lockett inspires Carlos Dunlap, Russell Wilson, Seahawks in team meeting: their why
Stuck on just one win in the last two months, the sunken Seahawks had their usual, Saturday meeting the night before a game.
Tyler Lockett, though, wanted to talk about something new.
“We had one of those hard talks,” teammate Carlos Dunlap said.
Lockett asked his Seahawks teammates to think inside themselves. To think beyond all the noise about this 3-8 team’s failings. About what their future may or may not hold. About these final six games of a lost season being such an unfamiliar situation for everyone around this franchise, one that’s been to the playoffs eight of the last nine years with two Super Bowls and the Pacific Northwest’s only NFL title in that span.
“Last night, Tyler did a really nice job in the meeting with us,” Pete Carroll said Sunday. “He had a chance to bring up something that he wanted to talk about. We gave him the opportunity. He did a great job with our guys, about hanging together, and about why we are connected, and why we are what we are.
“It was really cool.
“I think it had something to do with today.”
“Today” was just the Seahawks’ second win in eight games, a frantic, wild, 30-23 outlasting of their own offense and the previously rolling San Francisco 49ers, their NFC West rivals.
Briefly down injured in the end zone then in the blue observation tent behind Seattle’s bench in the first half, Lockett returned and had a team-high seven catches for 68 yards. His exquisite touchdown catch on which he looked over one shoulder, then his other, while Russell Wilson’s pass was in flight to him in tight coverage into the end zone was a display of coordination only Lockett and few other NFL wide receivers can pull off.
“Really special play,” Wilson said.
The stupendous score gave Seattle the lead for the first time and for good, 30-23 with 2:28 left in the third quarter.
But according to Carroll and Seahawks teammates, what Lockett said the night before taking over the team meeting at the Seahawks’ eastside Seattle hotel did plenty more.
“(Carroll) just basically made it an open floor for everybody to communicate their why,” Dunlap, the veteran defensive end, said, “and why we sacrifice what we do for this game, why we continue to work and fight for this game when the season is going the way it is. Why we are here. How did we get here? Where we came from. Who are we doing it for?”
The talk had Dunlap, Lockett and other of the team’s star millionaires getting back to their roots as children growing up, of dreams they had to get where they were. They thought of their love for the game, rather than the playoff chances or the wins and — more this season — losses.
“A lot of the messages were very impactful,” Dunlap said.
They sure were on Dunlap. He had the best game of his disappointing, quiet season.
Dunlap had been mothballed recently: 17 snaps two games ago against Arizona, four snaps the entire game six days earlier in Seattle’s last-play loss at Washington. Coaches had told him they were playing second-year edge rushers Alton Robinson and Darrell Taylor instead. The 32-year-old Dunlap has played in just 39% of defensive plays this season, by far the lowest of his 12-year career.
Sunday, Dunlap turned his limited role into a decisive one. He got his first sack of the season, dumping Jimmy Garoppolo in the end zone in the third quarter. The safety tied the game at 23.
Then, after the 49ers marched 95 yards to the 3-yard line trying to tie or win in the final minute, Dunlap batted down Garoppolo’s final pass on fourth and goal from the 3-yard line with 18 seconds remaining.
He was also part of Seattle’s defensive front that limited San Francisco (6-6), which had been romping all over teams on the ground coming in, to just 71 yards on 25 rushes Sunday.
That preserved the Seahawks’ inspired — if not pretty — victory.
“As a competitor, I just want to continue to prove myself right,” Dunlap said.
He mentioned his “foundation,” not his philanthropic one but his family, and his parents. He mentioned wanting to inspire kids back home in North Charleston, South Carolina.
He was thinking as Lockett was intending his teammates to think, the entire game Sunday and, the veteran receiver hopes, the final five games of a season of pride, if not playoffs.
“Growing up, I knew I wasn’t the best athlete initially on my team. I know there are a lot of guys who could have been here, probably, in my shoes,” Dunlap said.
“But I’m the one here. So I just want to make sure I bring awareness and leave that door open for the next one, and give back so I can support the next up-and-coming kid.
“Simple as that.”
Wilson basically thanked Lockett for what he did Saturday night.
“Yeah, I thought it was really cool last night,” Wilson said after the best of his four games in his return from finger surgery: 30 for 37, 231 yards, two touchdowns and an interception tight end Gerald Everett dropped.
“Tyler was able to talk to our whole team about our why. Why do we play? Guys went around the room and were able to talk about their whys. It was really touching, really special just to hear from guys about why they play the game, where does it come from, what’s the depths of it all and some really amazing stuff.”
Wilson said for him, he plays for God, his family, his wife Ciara, their three kids, his brother, his sister and his mother, Tammy Wilson, a former nurse.
“What amazing woman she is and how she’s been able to be such a rock in my life,” Wilson said. “She’s always texting me early in the mornings, late at nights, just giving me some amazing advice and Scripture and filling my spirit. So my mom has always been amazing at doing that, and that’s always been a key part of it.
“Then I think about the early mornings with my dad (the late Harrison Wilson). Why I do it? I think that when I think about my dad, I know that he wishes he would be here.
“Like I always tell you guys, he has the best seat in the house.”
This story was originally published December 5, 2021 at 8:33 PM.
