Seahawks safety Deon Grant is beginning his second season with the Seahawks and ninth in the NFL. A second round draft choice by the Carolina Panthers in 2000 out of Tennessee, he played four years with the Panthers before signing a 3-year free agent contract with the Jacksonville Jaguars. The Seahawks snared him in free agency prior to the 2007 season. Grant will blog every other day through training camp for Seahawks.com on his experience and perceptions with the Seahawks. Grant, 29, spent his rookie year on injured reserve and has started 112 consecutive games since, the most of any other safety in the NFL.*
I didn't know that I had that many starts in a row. I just love to play the game, and I've had a great time with every team I've played on. If you want to play this game, you have to approach it as taking advantage of every opportunity. The only difficulty I've had with the transition is leaving my daughter in Atlanta and being so far away.
As far as coming to a new team, I came here to be on a consistently good team with a great staff, so that adjustment has been easy for me. My mentality is I'm a professional athlete and there's no telling where I may be from day to day or year to year. The NBA is a lot worse because they have so many games and one day you're here, and the next day you're playing on the other side of the country. This is nothing to me.
If moving around brought me out here to win like I want to win, so be it. I'll do whatever I have to do to win with this team, and we'll be better this year.
I came here for the offseason workout program, but mostly I like to workout on my own in Atlanta to prepare for the season. I worked out some with Jamal Lewis, Terrell Owens and Takeo Spikes in Atlanta just to see where they're at and compete with them for a week or so. From there, I'll continue to do my own thing, take the proper amount of rest and work out hard on my own.
The key for me is to come in feeling strong and energetic. I have to say the way I went about it this year is what I'll do the rest of my career because I feel so good right now. This year, I gave my body more time to recover to the utmost instead of continuing to work and not recovering. I used to do so many charity basketball games, and work out that I would beat myself up. This year I recovered a lot more. Those games would drain me.
After I broke my hip my rookie year, basketball was part of my rehab, so I stuck with it. But it was wearing me out, so I didn't play in as many this year and concentrated more doing charity work with kids instead. Now I'm ready to and feel great.
Today was a great first practice. Everybody out here is focused and ready to get this thing going this year. We all know we left a lot out there on the field last year and it didn't have to be that way. I'm not talking about just the Green Bay game, either.
I'm talking about the games leading up to the Green Bay game in the regular season. We left a lot out there and we know that. We could have had a better record and maybe gotten home field advantage, and everybody knows what that would mean to us.
We can accept the criticism we got because we had to criticize ourselves. But we built a lot last year and we're a stronger family than we were last year. Now we're ready to make our move and live up in the big house (and win).
