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During the Seahawks’ first 34 seasons, only two rookies have led the team in tackles.

There was Lofa Tatupu in 2005 and … uhhh … hmmm. Give up? The other also was a middle linebacker. It was Terry Beeson, who did it in 1977 – five years before Tatupu was born.

Beeson not only was the team’s leading tackler in its second season of existence, he had 18 tackles in a game against the Houston Oilers and Earl Campbell that season and followed with a 153-tackle performance in 1978.

Others have come close in the past three decades, but both marks remain the franchise records.

“It’s still pretty amazing that those records are standing 30 years later,” Beeson said recently during a telephone interview from the insurance agency he has run in Coffeyville, Kan., for the past 10 years.

It’s the longevity of his productivity that makes Beeson a candidate for a spot on the Seahawks’ 35th Anniversary team, which will be selected by the readers of Seahawks.com.

Like Tatupu, Beeson played middle linebacker in a 4-3 front – before Chuck Knox arrived in 1983 and switched to a 3-4 until the 1990 season. Like Tatupu, Beeson’s greatest asset was his command of the defense, not just his position.

“First of all, you can’t go in there and play that position unless you’ve got some real knowledge of what’s going on all around you,” Beeson said when asked for the keys to his success. “You have to not only be able to understand what’s going on in front of you, but understand what’s going on behind you.

“The second thing is, you’d better be a person that likes contact. Because it’s going to be there whether you want it or not. Playing in the middle, you’re going to get hit at least once and sometimes two and three times before you get to where you’re going. I used to tell the outside linebackers, ‘Hey, you guys are real wussies. You only get hit from one side. I’m in here and I get hit from both sides.’ ”

Beeson punctuated that last statement with a robust laugh.

Asked if one of those collisions or tackles stood out, Beeson said, “I don’t have one thing that is a favorite memory. I have a lot of great memories – of the people I was associated with, the fans. Another is beating Oakland twice in ’79, the year before they won the Super Bowl.” 

Here’s his take on each of his still-standing records:

*The 18 tackles against the Oilers. Sammy Green tied that total the following season against the Minnesota Vikings, while 11 players have registered 16 in a game – the most recent being David Hawthorne in his first NFL start last season against the Chicago Bears.

But no one has surpassed Beeson’s mark.

“A lot of those tackles were against Earl Campbell, so it was a long day at the office,” Beeson said of a back who put the punishing jolt in the term “thunder thighs.”

“I paid for every one of those tackles. I think I passed out in the locker room afterwards and was totally dehydrated.”

*The 153 tackles in 1978. Chad Brown collected 150 in 1998, Anthony Simmons had 147 in 2000 and Michael Jackson hit 140 in 1981. Again, close, but no record-breaker.

“My take on it is a little more on the conservative side,” Beeson said. “In those days, we only had 44 players on the roster and we were only six deep at linebacker. So you pretty much had to play.”

Regardless of down, distance or potential dehydration.

“There weren’t a whole lot of what you might call situational players,” he said.

Just those who played in every situation – like Beeson.

His arrival in Seattle even comes with a side story worth repeating. He was a second-round draft choice out of Kansas in 1977 – with one of the four draft choices obtained in the trade with Dallas that allowed the Cowboys to select Tony Dorsett with the second pick overall. The Seahawks used those picks to draft tackle Steve August in the first round and guard Tom Lynch, Beeson and linebacker Peter Cronan in the second round.

“Needless to say, it was a huge privilege to get the opportunity to go to Seattle,” Beeson said. “Being part of the Tony Dorsett deal was just an unbelievable thing.”

The team Beeson joined was an eclectic assortment of veterans who had been acquired in the 1976 allocation draft and young players who had come in the 1976 and 1977 drafts. The Seahawks also were coming off a 2-12 inaugural season.

“You come in as a rookie, you’ve got eyes wide open and everything is about learning,” Beeson said. “But it was certainly quite different going to a team that is making a lot of changes. Many of the players that had been on that original first-year team were veteran players that had been around the league in a lot of different places.”

Players like Dave Brown, Nick Bebout, Norm Evans, Ron Howard and Sam McCullum.

“It was quite a privilege to get an opportunity to play with some of those guys,” Beeson said.

After leaving the Seahawks following the 1981 season, Beeson played one season with the San Francisco 49ers and two more in the USFL (with the Oklahoma Outlaws in 1984 and the Jacksonville Bulls in 1985).

“Very few people get the opportunity to retire from football on their terms,” Beeson said. “Most of them are done because of health reasons or they can’t run fast enough anymore, which was my case. I was never a speed demon and by the time the game got into the mid-80s – and they were playing the Frisbee game, where everything was about run-and-gun – my ability and slow speed was pretty much not desirable.”

As a player, anyway. So Beeson coached the linebackers at Coffeyville Community College during an eight-season stretch when the Red Ravens won two national championships. He later served as the school’s athletic director for 10 years.

He also got married during that time, and he and his wife, Shelley, have a 14-year-old daughter, Brandi.

Beeson is proof that you can indeed go home again.

“I came back because I still had family here,” he said. “Now I’m married and have a daughter, so it’s not bad. Not bad, at all.”

Neither is still holding a pair of Seahawks’ records after all these years.