When the Seahawks signed veteran defensive tackle John Randle in 2001, Mike Holmgren offered, “He might be one of the best to ever play the position.”
Good read by the team’s former coach. Randle was voted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame on Saturday, slapping an exclamation point on his unlikely rise from undrafted free agent to, well, one of the best to ever play the position.
“It’s indeed an honor and a privilege to be in the Hall with the greatest to ever play the game,” Randle said Monday during a cell phone interview from South Florida, where he will spend much of the week getting an introduction into just what it entails to the be a Hall of Famer.
“I am still just shocked to be inducted because this is a game I played just because I loved playing football. You go out and do something just because you like doing it, but you never expect anything like this. So I’m still trying to just believe that I’m in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. It’s cool, but it’s so overwhelming that it’s just unbelievable.”
Randle’s road to Canton started with 11 productive seasons with the Minnesota Vikings, the team that took a chance in 1990 on an undersized (6 foot 1, 278 pound) rookie free agent from Texas A&I. He had double-digit sacks in eight consecutive seasons for the Vikings.
But in three seasons with the Seahawks, he led the team in sacks twice (2001 and 2002) and was voted to the Pro Bowl once (’01). By the time he announced his retirement after the 2003 season, Randle had collected more sacks (137½) than any defensive tackle in the history of the game, been voted All-Pro six times and to the Pro Bowl seven times and selected to the NFL All-Decade team for the 1990s.
Despite all that, Randle still had a hard time considering himself a Hall of Fame player. Saturday, Randle was watching The Golf Channel while his wife, Candace, followed his fate on the NFL Network.
“All of a sudden I heard her start screaming,” Randle said. “I figured it was either something good or something bad. She came into the room and told me and all of sudden I was just in shock.”
His selection caught Randle by surprise to the point where he had make a hasty trip from his home in Medina, Minn., to South Florida on Saturday night so he could join the other members of the Class of 2010 for the coin toss prior to Sunday’s Super Bowl game between the New Orleans Saints and Indianapolis Colts.
The Randle entourage included Candace, their 5-year-old twins – son Jonathan and daughter Ryann – and Candace’s sister, who went to help with the kids.
“I’m sitting next to this guy on the flight with a smile on my face that was the biggest smile in the world,” Randle said. “He’s looking at me and I’m just giving him the thumbs-up like, ‘Yeah, it happened.’ And he’s probably like, ‘What in the heck is wrong with this guy? What’s his problem?’
“But I couldn’t stop smiling. I couldn’t be still. I was just as happy as could be.”
What transpired earlier Saturday was like déjà vu all over again for the undrafted Randle.
“I was telling my wife, ‘This reminds me of draft day again back in 1990 and you’re sitting there waiting on that phone call,’ ” Randle said. “I never got that phone call on draft day. And here I was waiting on that phone call from the Hall of Fame and never got that one, either.”
Say what? So many friends were calling and texting Randle on Saturday that the caller from the Hall of Fame could not reach him.
“They had to call my wife to tell her,” he said with a laugh. “But that was great, because she was all giddy about it.”
While the foundation of Randle’s Hall of Fame career was laid with the Vikings, he remembers his stay with the Seahawks fondly.
“My time in Seattle was awesome,” he said. “I got a chance to be around Mike Holmgren and the Seahawks, where I made some great and lasting friends – (quarterback)
“Even though it was at the end of my career, it’s just nothing but fond memories.”
Not the least of which included Candace becoming pregnant, and learning to cook during their first year of marriage.
“I got a chance to be on the West Coast, drink Starbucks coffee and play in the new Seahawks stadium,” he added. “I also got to raise my sack total and help that organization get on the right track under Mike. Like I said, it’s such fond memories.”
Randle got into the Hall, in part, at the expense of Kennedy, who he replaced with the Seahawks and one of the greatest players in franchise history. Kennedy was a finalist for the second consecutive year and made it to the final 10 on Saturday before being eliminated in the voting.
“I texted Cortez almost immediately and said, ‘You’re next,’ ” Randle said. “And I definitely want to be there when he’s inducted because he really deserves it. I look forward to seeing him get in.”
