Up from bottom of Seahawks, NFL, Phil Haynes intends to maximize this chance — for Mom
Phil Haynes has been to the bottom of the Seahawks. The bottom of the NFL, really.
The team that drafted him — the team for which he has earned a new role as a full-time starting guard for the first time in his five-year career — cut him. He was (briefly) unemployed two years ago.
Haynes, 27, has had six injuries in four years, including multiple ones in each of the last two seasons. He’s had damage to his abdomen, ankle, hip, groin, head and ankle again. He’s had surgeries. He had two seasons and the majority of a third lost to all that.
“There were some dark days, I’m not going to lie,” he said last week standing on the Seahawks’ indoor practice field before one of the first practices of training camp.
“There were some dark days.”
The darkest?
“Man, I mean ...,” Haynes said, hesitantly, “... you really want to go there?”
In the summer of 2021, Haynes had just moved from his hometown of Raleigh, North Carolina, to Seattle to report for the start of his third training camp. He’s already had two lonely seasons to begin his Seahawks and NFL career, with as many injuries (four) as games played.
His best friend through that grind was his mother, Betty Capers, back home in North Carolina.
The day he reported across the country for that Seahawks training camp in Renton, July 27, 2021, Haynes’ mom died in Raleigh. She had battled arthritis, fibromyalgia and stage 4 breast cancer. She had just had her 62nd birthday.
Thousands of miles away, trying to establish himself with the Seahawks in his important training camp beginning the next day, Haynes was devastated.
He had just had another offseason surgery. Then, he contracted COVID-19.
His mom’s funeral in Raleigh was four days into that training camp.
Weeks later, the Seahawks waived Haynes.
The team had traded for veteran Gabe Jackson from the Raiders that spring to be their new right guard. Seattle also had Damien Lewis. Its third-round pick in 2020 was proving healthier and more available than Haynes to be the team’s other starting guard.
So the Seahawks included Haynes among their final roster cuts that set the first roster for the 2021 regular season.
“It was hard,” he said. “I’m not going to lie, it was really hard.”
Haynes was lost. He was 25, out of football. Out of a job. Alone, without his mother and best friend.
The day he got cut, he just drove.
Where’d he go?
He’s not sure.
“All I had known was football,” he said. “So, what are you going to do? I’m going to go drive. Somewhere.
“I just went out for a drive. Thought about life. Because my mother had just passed away. That’s who I wanted to call, but I couldn’t, obviously.
“It was hard, I’m not going to lie.”
What Haynes didn’t know was the Seahawks were certain he would clear league waivers the next day. Because he had barely played his first two NFL seasons, no team knew him enough to be willing to claim him; that would require he go onto the claiming team’s active roster for the start of the regular season.
The next day, the Seahawks called him back. Seattle signed him back to its practice squad to begin the 2021 season.
That’s where Haynes starting rebuilding himself, mentally and physically.
He was jobless for just one day. But it was the second-worst day of his life, soon after the worst.
“It was a tough day,” he said. “It was really hard.”
Two coaches changed his life
Four years after he left Wake Forest for Seattle, Haynes remains beloved in Winston-Salem, home city of Wake’s beautiful campus.
“How’s Phil?” Dave Goren, a professor of sports broadcasting and sideline reporter for Wake Forest football radio broadcasts, said last month in Winston-Salem to a visitor from Seattle.
“He is such a quality person.”
Another of those from Wake who value Haynes helped get him through that summer in Seattle two years ago.
Seahawks assistant line coach Keli’i Kekuewa is like a friend to Haynes. Kekuewa was Haynes’ line coach at Wake Forest in 2015 when he was a starting right tackle and in ‘16 when he was the Demon Deacons’ starting right guard. The assistant position coach knew how close Haynes had been to his mother.
Haynes credits Kekuewa and Seahawks offensive line coach Andy Dickerson for changing not just his seemingly dead-end NFL career in his darkest summer into fall of 2021, but his life.
“Andy was here. Keli’i was here,” Haynes said. “They were in my ear the whole time. They were saying, ‘I know you’ve got a bunch of stuff going on outside the building, but keep getting better.’”
Haynes did. He continued to train fiendishly in the weight room, impressing coaches and trainers with his raw strength. He continued to absorb Dickerson’s teachings. He studied the playbook as if he was going to start, though deep into the 2021 season he never had in the NFL.
All the while, Kekuewa and Dickerson kept encouraging him — with empathy. They knew Haynes had far more than football going on in his life.
“And I really appreciate them for doing that,” Haynes said, “because it changed not only my football career but also my life.
“Because they helped me more as a person than as a football player.
“I really can’t thank them enough for that.”
Dickerson smiled this week when told of what Haynes still feels about the coach’s help.
“The thing about Phil is, he’s one of the guys that you know they are going to max out in everything they do. In effort. In football. In life,” Dickerson said on the edge of the field before the fifth practice of training camp Monday.
“When you have a great person who just also happens to be a really good football player, you can’t ask for anything better.
“He just cares so much.
“It’s phenomenal to see Phil’s growth. ... He’s one of the guys — man, I’m privileged to coach him.
“Yeah,” Dickerson said, grinning again, “I’m a huge Phil Haynes fan.”
Phil Haynes Seattle setbacks
Haynes’ rookie year, 2019, never really began.
He had abdominal surgery. That was to fix a sports hernia the Seahawks medical staff discovered soon after Seattle drafted him in the fourth round from Wake four years ago.
His recovery from that surgery was not smooth. He was on the physically-unable-to-perform list from before the start of training camp in July until November. Upon his return, he injured his ankle. He did not play in a game that rookie regular season.
He made his NFL debut count. It was in the Seahawks’ wild-card playoff game at Philadelphia in January 2020. The following week he replaced concussed Jamarco Jones at guard during Seattle’s loss at Green Bay in the divisional playoffs.
Year two, different injuries, an even worse result. Haynes had a bad hip through preseason practices. He went on injured reserve to begin Seattle’s 2020 season. He returned in December and played in two games with 10 of his 11 snaps on special teams. Then he injured his groin. He ended that season back on injured reserve.
Year three, the season began with that worst summer of his life.
But then he got his first shot in those playoffs in January 2022. Finally healthy at the start of last season, he earned splitting playing time and starts with Jackson at right guard. When Haynes often outplayed the far older, more expensive Jackson last season, the Seahawks cut Jackson to save $6.5 million in salary-cap space for 2023.
They re-signed Haynes for one year and $4 million in February.
Seattle’s coaches thought they’d have a competition at right guard in this spring and summer training camp, with rookie Anthony Bradford and perhaps veteran Evan Brown. But Haynes has had the starting job since the first practice of the offseason.
He’s come too far, bulled through too much, to let go of this chance.
What kept him going through all that to where he is now, the Seahawks’ new starting right guard in a contract year with the chance to earn a big, multiyear contract if he plays well this season?
“Man, just belief, quite honestly,” Haynes said. “Just belief that something good is going to happen, that there was light at the end of the tunnel.
“And, really, just my teammates. My teammates saw me every year, working hard. It just didn’t work out. My body wasn’t working, or something. But just the guys in the locker room, especially guys like ‘D-Lew’ who have been here for a long time, he just kept saying, ‘Phil, no matter what, just keep workin’.’
“I have. And thank God I did, because I’m in a good position now.”
Then he offered words useful in any walk of life, almost all of which come full of potholes and setbacks.
“You’ve got to keep persevering,” he said. “Keep grindin’.”
Different as a starter
Players who waited years to become starters in the very-little-is-guaranteed NFL routinely say nothing changes when they finally become first-teamers.
Geno Smith was asked in May if things were different for him this offseason into training camp coming off the first Pro Bowl and playoff start of his career than they were a year ago at this time. That’s when he was battling Drew Lock for the job to replace traded Russell Wilson as Seattle’s quarterback.
“In my mind, no,” Smith said.
“In my mind, I keep the same mentality.”
Smith was on benches of four different teams for seven years before he got his Seahawks shot last season. But he’d never been cut from any of those teams and brought back for his chance, as Haynes was.
So when asked if it’s different for him now that he’s starting opposed to all the years of injuries, frustration and watching, Haynes smiles.
“I mean, I would love to say that it’s not,” he said. “But it is.”
He is the longest-tenured Seahawk offensive lineman who has only played for Seattle in his NFL career.
“I mean, there’s a lot more responsibility on me this year. Being one of the older guys in the room — before, I could kind of do it and I could be kind of quiet, do my own thing. Now I’ve got to lead other guys,” Haynes said.
“That’s just one thing different about this year, being a leader in this room.”
Haynes and Lewis, the opposite starting guard on the left side in the fourth and final year of his rookie contract, are naturally quiet. The lead by example, by doing.
This summer, three of the seven guards and centers on the Seahawks’ training-camp roster are rookies. Olu Oluwatimi is competing with Brown to be the team’s new starting center. Seattle drafted huge (6-4, 332-pound) Bradford, a guard, in the fourth round; he’s been backing up Haynes at right guard. The team also has undrafted Kendall Randolph from Alabama working as a reserve guard.
Dickerson is asking Haynes and Lewis to emerge from their comfortable shells to lead more outwardly and obviously this season.
“Andy wants us to step out and be a little more vocal,” Haynes said.
So he is drawing upon his experience watching how veterans led the Seahawks’ offensive line in Haynes’ first years in the league.
“I’m naturally quiet. But seeing guys like Duane Brown, Mike Iupati, seeing those guys throughout the years do it, I’m trying to pick up on what they did,” Haynes said.
He’s playing following those guys. He’s playing with new partners on his left, at center, and 2022 rookie Abe Lucas at tackle on his right.
But he’s playing FOR only one person.
His playing this season for Mom.
“I actually am,” Haynes said. “She passed away two years ago yesterday.”
Haynes shook his head. His voice caught in his throat.
“Crazy.”
This story was originally published August 1, 2023 at 5:00 AM.
