Appropriate time for West Point grad Jon Rhattigan’s return to Seahawks: Army-Navy week
Back for the first time in a year, the linebacker would be an Army lieutenant reached up with both hands and tapped the Seahawks’ sign over the doorway, the one from the locker room to the practice field.
“I’M ALL IN.”
This is an appropriate week for Jon Rhattigan to be all in again.
Twelve months after he tore knee ligaments in a game at the Los Angeles Rams, Rhattigan is set to return from Seattle’s physically-unable-to-perform list and get back to being a mainstay on the Seahawks’ special-teams units.
Coach Pete Carroll said Rhattigan’s season debut will come Sunday when Seattle (7-5) hosts the Carolina Panthers (4-8) at Lumen Field.
It’s the first game of the Seahawks’ five-game push through the end of the regular season into the playoffs. They currently hold the NFC’s final playoff spot, and are one game behind San Francisco for the NFC West lead. Seattle hosts the 49ers next Thursday.
“Jonny is ready to go. He is ready to go. We are really excited for Jon to be back in action,” Carroll said.
“We’re counting on Jon to help us.”
This is the third and final week Rhattigan can practice without the Seahawks yet adding him to active roster. Last month the team designated him to return from the physically-unable-to-perform list he’s been on since July. Seattle has to activate its second-year linebacker by Saturday, or the team must put him on injured reserve for the rest of the season.
Finally, for the first time since last Dec. 21, he’s playing.
“It’s great to be back,” he said.
Rhattigan’s return comes during what is annually a big week for him. It’s a big week for any West Point graduate.
It’s Army-Navy week.
The 123rd Army-Navy Game is Saturday in Philadelphia. Rhattigan played in four editions of the college football game like no other.
Graduates of the United States Military Academy at West Point and the U..S. Naval Academy in Annapolis get asked by fellow graduates all the time: “What was your record against Navy (Army)?” That’s especially true for men who played football at West Point and Annapolis.
Rhattigan was 3-1 against Navy. That was after he signed his appointment letter and took his oath of military service weeks out of Neuqua Valley High School in Naperville, Illinois, in the Chicago suburbs.
He is the first West Point graduate to play for the Seahawks; former Navy quarterback Keenan Reynolds played two games as a wide receiver for Seattle in 2018.
Rhattigan got special approval from the Department of the Army to defer his commissioning and service as an active-duty infantry officer. Technically, right now the Army considers Rhattigan to be in the Inactive Ready Reserve for the second of three years. He’s not yet officially a second lieutenant, as all his classmates are.
“After my playing career, whenever that may be, I will still require five years of active duty, or service in some capacity,” he told The News Tribune during his rookie season last year.
His injury came in the open field on a kickoff early in the second half of the Seahawks’ loss at the Rams in a Dec. 2021 game rescheduled by Los Angeles’ COVID-19 cases to a Tuesday. It came on what many players around the league have said is a exceedingly slick artificial playing surface at SoFi Stadium. Multiple NFL players have sustained major knee and leg injuries on that field since the palatial stadium opened a few years ago.
The Seahawks could have released Rhattigan after his rookie season; his rookie free-agent contract was only for 2021. But Carroll and his coaching staff love Rhattigan’s grit, his background and his relentlessness on Seattle’s kick-coverage and return teams.
While he was still in knee rehab the team gave him a new contract for 2022 worth $825,000 — dang good lieutenant pay — and basically put him on layaway for the first three months of this season.
Seattle’s medical and training staffs are known to be conservative in their processes for major injuries, sometimes to the frustration of the player and coaches. Yet Rhattigan said he appreciated the methodical approach the Seahawks’ medical staff took to his rehabilitation from reconstructive knee surgery last December.
With the exception of some weeks with his parents in their new home in Florida, he spent almost the entire offseason around team headquarters. He was inside its training room, grinding through seemingly endless exercises and mobility tests for his repaired knee.
It worked. Rhattigan is back for the Seahawks’ most important games this season.
“He’s looked great. He’s really been fast,” Carroll said. “And the process must have been on point, because the day that he came back a couple of weeks ago, he was going.
“He could go, and he hasn’t backed off one step the whole time.”
This story was originally published December 8, 2022 at 11:26 AM.
