Now 30, a dad of 3, Frank Clark comes full circle back to Seahawks. And he’s beaming
Frank Clark was smiling so broadly you could hear it.
He walked into the main auditorium at the Seahawks’ Virginia Mason Athletic Center like it was his room. He said hi to many familiar faces. He joked they all still looked good.
“I feel excellent. Right back at home,” Clark said Thursday, his first day of his second Seattle go-round as the newest Seahawk.
They officially signed him Thursday to a contract for the rest of this season.
“I feel like I got out of bed this morning, went to school, came back and my bed’s still messy and I can get right back in it,” Clark said.
He laughed.
Then he saluted Seahawks fans.
After he left Seattle in 2019, Clark played four seasons for the Chiefs. He won two Super Bowls for the rabid fan base in Kansas City.
Yet Clark said this Thursday: “There’s nobody like the 12s. You can go anywhere, you can go far and wide, wherever you want to go, you’re never going to find another city cheering for a team like the 12s cheer for you, you understand?”
Yes, he understands to play to his new-old crowd.
He is wiser now.
He is 30. He’s got three children. The Seahawks’ controversial top pick in the 2015 NFL draft first came to Seattle eight years ago as a 22-year-old months after he was kicked off his college team at Michigan. Now he is an old enough dad to talk about “a lot of exercise you get picking those kids up throughout the day, I’ll tell you.”
Monday, coach Pete Carroll and general manager John Schneider, the men who gave Clark his chance many teams weren’t willing to give him eight years ago, called Clark again. Monday was when the Seahawks learned top pass rusher Uchenna Nwosu needs season-ending pectoral surgery.
“They gave that call and I was ecstatic, just simply,” Clark said. “That was one of those calls I was waiting for.”
He was home nine days after the Broncos released him. He played just 29% of defensive snaps in two games with them. It was the second time he’d been released since March.
He’d signed a $105 million contract, won a Super Bowl ring and earned three Pro Bowl selections in those four years with the Chiefs. Yet his career seemed to be slowing at a dead end.
Except to Seattle.
Quandre Diggs, Jarran Reed lobbied
Seahawks defensive captain Quandre Diggs, who was in Clark’s draft class, lobbied the team to bring back Clark. Instead, Denver signed Clark before training camp began in late July.
“You get an opportunity to get a guy who’s played at a high level for a long time, a guy who has been in this building, who knows how things go around here,” Diggs said.
“Let him be himself. That’s what this place is all about.”
Clark acknowledged he indeed tried to return to Seattle months ago.
But the Seahawks had just signed Nwosu to a $45 million extension. They had drafted two outside linebacker/edge rushers in the last two drafts, Boye Mafe and Derick Hall. And they had given defensive end Dre’mont Jones a $51 million contract this spring, unusually large spending for Seattle in free agency.
“Of course we tried to get a few things done before the season,” Clark said. “But it didn’t work out like we wanted.
“I’m not big into learning new playbooks, as well.”
He laughed again.
“That’s always been one of my goals, to get back to Seattle at some point in my career,” he said. “You know, even going through my first stint here I wanted to be here for the rest of my career. You have dreams when you are growing up as a kid playing sports, I’m like ‘Man, I want to be one of those guys who plays for one team my whole career.’ Just do that, retire a Seahawk. Just one team.
“Unfortunately, that didn’t happen as I wanted it to happen.
“You learn life lessons through this stuff.”
Carroll and Schneider traded Clark to Kansas City before the 2019 season. His 13 sacks the previous season for Seattle pushed his market value beyond what the Seahawks were willing to pay him.
So Clark has come full circle. Thursday, he put on his new Seahawks jersey number 57 (number 55, Clark’s his entire NFL career, was already defensive end Dre’mont Jones’). Then he jogged onto the same practice field along Lake Washington where he became who he is.
Not, he said, just as an NFL player now in his ninth league season. But as a man.
“I was a little immature about four or five years ago,” he said.
“It started here. So a lot of the things that I learned just as a young player, coming out as a rookie, it came from here. It was instilled here. ...Everything that I was taught, everything nine years later in my career, it all started here in Seattle.”
Pete Carroll’s role in Frank Clark
Carroll, Schneider and the Seahawks selected Clark months after Michigan kicked him off its team his final college year. That was following his domestic-violence arrest in Ohio. The arrest took him off NFL teams’ draft boards.
Not Seattle’s.
Clark grew up in search of next meals as a kid in the notorious Baldwin Village section of Los Angeles. Carroll used to walk that neighborhood talking to people there, learning their concerns, when he was coach at USC leading his A Better LA philanthropic organization.
Clark matured and flourished in Seattle, including as a father of a young daughter born in Bellevue early in his NFL career. He and Jarran Reed, who also returned to the Seahawks’ defensive line this year after two seasons away, became great friends. Their daughters, a year apart, grew up together.
“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,” Reed said. “He just brings in here the winning. The winning atmosphere, to bring it here. “Let’s hope we can carry that home.”
Reed said Wednesday he’d also been lobbying Carroll and Schneider every chance he got to bring back Clark.
Carroll was already predisposed to do it.
“Frank grew up with us,” said the Seahawks coach who believes he can draw the best from any man, from any situation. “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.”
Clark sees it as a life-changing thing. Carroll and Schneider brought him to a Seahawks team coming off back-to-back Super Bowls.
“I thank God that I had Cliff Avril, Mike Bennett, Richard Sherman, Kam (Chancellor), Earl Thomas, Brandon Mebane, Bruce Irvin — I can go on and on — I thank God I had that type of group,” Clark said.
“I learned from the best you can learn from. And I carried that on throughout my career.
“It’s a journey. And I’m thankful for it,” he said. “I was able to go on that journey and come back to this place. This place has always held a special place in my heart.
“I’m thankful to be here.”
Clark will only have two full practices before the Seahawks (4-2) host the Cleveland Browns (4-2).
Yet he plans on playing Sunday at Lumen Field, for the first time since the end of the 2018 season.
“Hell, yeah,” Clark said. “I gotta wear the throwbacks.
“Hey, c’mon now! I told Coach Carroll, ‘I gotta wear that!’”
This story was originally published October 26, 2023 at 3:59 PM.
