The inside-Seahawks-HQ story of Jarran Reed lobbying for Frank Clark and why it worked
Every chance he got, Jarran Reed reminded his head coach, his coordinator, even his general manager.
“Frank Clark,” Reed said when he passed Pete Carroll in the hallway of Seahawks headquarters the last week and a half.
“Frank Clark,” Seattle’s defensive tackle would say upon seeing defensive coordinator Clint Hurtt, before he’d said “hi.”
“Frank Clark,” Reed said whenever he ran into GM John Schneider.
Reed admits it was all-out lobbying to bring Clark, his good friend and former defensive linemate, back to the Seahawks. It intensified Oct. 14 when Denver released Clark after he played two games for the Broncos.
It became incessant early this week. Seattle lost top pass rusher Uchenna Nwosu to season-ending surgery on his pectoral muscle last weekend during the team’s win over Arizona.
“Of course I did. I put the bug in,” Reed said Wednesday.
“I just put it out there — and kept going with the guys we had. Then when we lost ‘Chenna, that was kind of extra with it. Like, ‘Hey, we REALLY need...”
Reed chuckled. He stopped short of saying he issued an ultimatum to his coaches and GM to sign Clark.
“’If we can,’” Reed amended.
“I was going to keep sayin’ it.”
It worked. Clark is coming back to the Seahawks.
The team that drafted Clark when few would, in 2015 as its first pick in that draft, is signing back the 30-year-old edge rusher to back-fill for the loss of Nwosu. Clark was on his way to Seattle Wednesday. The three-time Pro Bowl and Super Bowl-champion defensive end with the Kansas City Chiefs after he left the Seahawks in 2019 will take a physical exam upon his arrival. Then he will sign a Seahawks contract for the remainder of this season.
“I’m pretty sure he’s going to be excited to get here,” Reed said.
“We’ve been on the phone nonstop pretty much since it happened.
“I just got done talking to him.”
Carroll says the team expects Clark to play Sunday when the Seahawks (4-2) host the Cleveland Browns (4-2) at Lumen Field (1:05 p.m., channel 13).
Reed joked he’s not sure how much pull he had in getting Clark here.
Fact is, no coach and team in the NFL knows Clark better than Carroll and the Seahawks.
“Frank grew up with us,” Carroll said. “It was a good process to see him come into the league and come in to being a young man and we had him for a lot of years there. It’s rewarding, he goes and wins a world championship at a place and has a lot of success and does good stuff.
“And then we get a chance to get him on the other end his career to see if he can come help us out some. It’s a good thing. It’s a really positive thing.”
Especially for Reed.
Often to himself in the locker room around reporters on the practice days between games, Reed practically held his own press conference in there Wednesday in his glow about Clark returning.
“Oh, yeah,” Reed said. “Explosive player. Experienced pass rusher.”
Reed even had statistics to share on his friend — such as Clark being among the best in NFL postseason history in sacks, at least since those became an official league stat in 1982.
It’s Willie McGinest (16 playoff sacks), Hall of Famer Bruce Smith (14 1/2) and Clark (13 1/2, three for Seattle and 10 1/2 for Kansas City).
“He’s played in the Super Bowl three times. He just brings in here the winning. The winning atmosphere, to bring it here.
“Let’s hope we can carry that home.”
Jarran Reed’s, Frank Clark’s friendship
Reed has multiple reasons to like Clark.
In 2018, Clark’s final season of his first Seahawks go-round, Reed played next to him — and both had career years. Reed had 10 1/2 sacks in that ‘18 season. Clark had 13.
For that, Reed got a life-changing raise from the $4.5 million he’d earned in his first four NFL seasons as Seattle’s second-round pick in 2016 to $14.75 million earned off am Seahawks extension in 2019 and ‘20.
Clark’s NFL market value as a rush end got too expensive for the Seahawks to keep him. After a contract impasse Carroll and Schneider traded him to the Chiefs, before the 2019 season.
While they played together, in Seattle and later with Kansas City in 2021, Reed and Clark grew tight off the field.
“It’s always good to get my good friend back. Our daughters grew up together. Everybody in our families, we’re close,” Reed said. “Even when I left Kansas City we stayed in contact. We’ve been friends for, what, eight years now.
“It’s just beyond being a teammate. That’s one of my really good friends.”
Reed’s daughter is now 8. Clark’s is a year younger. Clark has credited her for changing and maturing him.
Clark will join the rotation of outside linebackers that will replace Nwosu, the team’s sack leader last season and every-down force against the run. Clark, Darrell Taylor and rookie Derick Hall are likely to be opposite starting left outside linebacker Boye Mafe.
Mafe is having a standout second NFL season. He and Reed lead Seattle with four sacks in six games, and are big reasons its defense has gone from 30th in the NFL against the run last season to third in yards allowed per carry so far in 2023.
Reed thinks this return is what Clark needs. He’s returning to the coach and GM who believed in him after he’d been suspended his final college season at Michigan for a domestic-violence arrest in 2014. Since the end of last season Clark has been released by the Chiefs and the Broncos, after four months with Denver.
“He’s going to be real excited,” Reed said. “I think it’s going to be a breath of fresh air, like it was for me, coming back to where we both started at.
“That’s just the best thing.”
This story was originally published October 26, 2023 at 5:30 AM.
