This is the second in a series of blogs from Seahawks safety Deon Grant, 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 throughout 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.
We wore pads today for the first time and everybody got excited. There were a lot of guys out there running hard, and all of us on defense were ready for the contact. We wanted to get out there and hit, playing football like we can. We weren't trying to hurt each other or anything like that, but wanted to get out there to break these pads in for the season.
One thing about this team, we're not the type of guys that do a lot of trash-talking, but we do talk a lot on the field. There was plenty of talking, but it was friendly talking ... competing talking on the football field. But when we get to real games, you know we're not going to get a guy trying to punk us and have us keep our mouth shut, but we'll take it and let them know we'll come back at that. You could see it in everybody eyes, we're going to compete. And with our pads on today, it was easy for all of us to get it going.
You know when it comes to our secondary, you have to give a lot of credit to the personnel guys and coaches that put us together as a unit. There's a lot here, and I'm not just talking about talent. One thing about us, there's a lot of guys here that are deep in their thoughts about playing football. They speak their mind and think a lot about the way they play football. They are always showing from their heart that we care about this team and play for one another. We're very solid together. We let each other know what we expect from one another and produce.
On a cool day like today, man this is perfect football weather. Man, I can breathe. When I played in Carolina I couldn't breathe it was so hot during training camp. In Jacksonville, I couldn't breathe either. Now I can really breathe. During two-a-days, we couldn't even have a second practice in the afternoon it was so bad. We had to have them at night. I'm loving every minute of it.
People are talking about this being Coach Holmgren's last year, but I'm just going to enjoy every part of him that he can give to us this year as a coach. I don't think anybody is looking at it as his last year coaching us. We're all out there getting ready to play ball for him the best way we know how.
His coaching skills are so fine, the way he talks to us, we can all understand why he has been so successful all these years. Coach has the ability to get his point out there so the players know exactly what he wants us to do. He's definitely tough on us, just the way a father is tough on his child. We know that he cares about us. He's tough on us because this is a tough sport and he needs to be. But at the same time, he's an understanding and that's why we want to win for him.
