Shaun Alexander enters Seahawks’ Ring of Honor with a Seattle legacy far beyond football
Most know the football excellence that made Shaun Alexander one of the greatest Seahawks of all time.
They know he holds the team record for most yards rushing in a career. They know his franchise records for rushing touchdowns and total touchdowns. If you are older than 20 you remember Alexander’s NFL Most Valuable Player season of 2005. He romped that year for 1,880 yards rushing, 27 rushing touchdowns and 28 total scores, all Seahawks records. He, coach Mike Holmgren and quarterback Matt Hasselbeck led Seattle into its first Super Bowl.
“It was amazing,” Alexander says now.
Sunday, Alexander enters the Seahawks’ Ring of Honor, joining Holmgren and Hasselbeck after their ceremonies last year. Alexander will become the 15th member inducted into the franchise’s legends group. His ceremony is at halftime of the team’s game against the Arizona Cardinals at Lumen Field.
Fewer know the true legacy Alexander left in Seattle.
It’s what he cherishes most today, as a 45-year-old father of 12 — twelve (!) — with his wife in suburban Washington, D.C.
“On the field there’s this, with the 12s, to get in and get out with a win in Seattle it’s going to be hard,” Alexander said from his D.C.-area home this week. “So, I loved that we changed the culture. Winning, in general...going to the playoffs five years in a row. It created the culture that this is a winning town. That was just amazing.
“And then off the field, I was just really blessed to be around Dr. Gregg Alex at the Matt Talbot Center,” Alexander said of the executive director of program by Catholic Community Services of Western Washington. “He had a homeless shelter down there close to the Space Needle.”
The Matt Talbot Center is a clinical outpatient addiction recovery program that serves individuals experiencing addiction, homelessness, and mental-health issues. It’s on Third Avenue in downtown Seattle.
One Saturday during his time playing for the Seahawks (2000-07), soon after he was the league’s MVP and earned a $62 million Seahawks contract, then the richest ever for an NFL running back, Alexander threw a 29th birthday party for his wife Valerie. The venue: the Talbot Center.
Valerie attended Seattle Pacific University. She sought to help the homeless. She passed out blankets to them on Seattle’s cold nights even before the running back married her here in 2002.
“Many moons ago,” Alexander said, smiling over his somewhat speckled goatee.
“I had some of my celebrity friends come in, singers and actors. It was just really cool to see my friends feeding the homeless and then turning around and eating (themselves).”
Alexander was talking to his friends during the party at the shelter, asking them and himself: Is all of us showing up here really doing anything to help others?
“And a homeless lady walked up to me and said, ‘Man! Can I say something to you Mr. Alexander?’,” the former Seahawk and nominee for the NFL Walter Payton Man of the Year Award said.
“She said, ‘I was just thinking: Does anybody care about me any more? And I saw this long line here at the Talbot Center and I said, ‘Hey, what’s going on? They don’t really give food out like this on a Saturday like this.’ And they said, ‘Yeah, Shaun Alexander is throwing a party, and he invited us.’”
The women’s message to Alexander: “Just for today, thank you for making me feel I am special.”
Almost 20 years later, THAT is Shaun Alexander’s legacy in Seattle.
“Those are the kind of moments off the field that I got to experience in Seattle that will stick with me forever,” he said.
Shaun Alexander, Dad x 12, legendary rusher
Eight of Alexander’s 12 children were born after he was done playing for the Seahawks in 2008. His and Valerie’s dozen range from 19-year-old Heaven to baby Hope, who turned 1 in August.
He and his wife had a 13th child, Torah, a daughter who passed away 70 days after birth in 2017.
“So that’s my 12,” Alexander said, nodding proudly. “So when we had (Hope) we said, ‘That’s our 12th Man.’”
Alexander wasn’t too shabby on the field, either.
He had a five-year run of romping through defenses that seem almost quaint today in the pass-a-rama NFL. Holmgren found the record-setting rusher at the University of Alabama was uniquely gifted in cut-back runs.
Holmgren’s West Coast offense was known for short, controlled passes. But it was Alexander’s one-cut runs behind Pro Bowl fullback Mack Strong plus Seattle’s offensive line featuring Hall of Famers Walter Jones and Steve Hutchinson that turned the Seahawks from decades of mostly middling seasons into a Super Bowl team.
From 2001 through that ‘05 season that ended in Super Bowl 40 in Detroit against the Pittsburgh Steelers, Alexander had consecutive rushing years of:
1,318 yards with 13 touchdowns
1,175 yards with 16 TDs
1,435 yards and 14 scores
1,636 yards and 16 touchdowns
1,880 yards with 27 TDs
Not only was he voted league MVP for the 2005 season, he was the NFL offensive player of the year. He was an All-Pro. He was voted three times to the Pro Bowl in that five-year span.
His career franchise record of 100 rushing touchdowns might stand forever, given how injured and spottily used NFL running backs are today.
Marshawn Lynch is second in Seahawks history for career rushing touchdowns. He had 58.
Lynch has had the most rushing touchdowns in a Seahawks season since Alexander left the team following the 2007 season. Lynch’s top scoring season was his league-leading 14 touchdowns in 2014 — half of Alexander’s total from 2005.
Alexander had a wowing 370 carries in 2005. Only twice since has a Seattle back gotten even 300 carries: Lynch in 2012 (315), and again in ‘13 (301).
Alexander said he had a method, and a deal, with Holmgren to score all those touchdowns.
“I would tell Coach Holmgren — there would be different (formation and pass-play) packages he wanted to do — and I’d be like, ‘Hey, once we get inside the 20, you’re ‘The Big Show’ (but) I want you to tell you this: I’m not coming off the field,’” Alexander said.
He learned that from his mentor when he first arrived in Seattle in 2000, former Seahawks running back Ricky Watters. Alexander calls Watters “the greatest big brother in the world.”
“And Mike — as much as Mike liked to control everything,” Alexander said, smiling, “he liked that I took on Ricky Watters’ persona in not coming off the field, because I wanted the ball.
“And he was like, ‘I’m going to give it to you once. And you better do something with it.’”
As he did with his entire Seahawks career, Alexander did something with it.
On and off the field.
“It’s humbling, and it’s exciting,” he said of going into the Seahawks’ Ring of Honor Sunday.
“And it brings back all the great memories of the guys I got to play with.
“It’s pretty sweet.”
