DETROIT -- There are two backs with 13 years of NFL service making Super Bowl debuts this weekend. One of them is Pittsburgh's Jerome Bettis -- plan to read volumes about the guy in the days ahead.
The other you probably don't know and wouldn't recognize without a name tag.
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| Mack Strong signed with Seattle as a free agent in 1993. (AP) |
Of all the coaches, players and front office staff with Seattle, no one better epitomizes what this year's Seahawks are all about than Strong. He labors in anonymity. He's good at what he does. In fact, he's so good he was named to the Pro Bowl. He's been around forever, yet people are only now waking up to him.
Sound familiar?
"Mack Strong is almost my favorite player of all time," said coach Mike Holmgren. "He's played 13 years and done all the dirty work. He's a good man, a good father and a wonderful family guy. I can't say enough about him."
Give us a week, Mike.
Strong is the longest tenured member of the Seahawks, so he has a perspective that is as rare as it is valuable. He knows what it's like to lose. In fact, he knows what it's like to lose in the AFC West as well as the NFC West. He knows what it's like to move, too, recalling for reporters Sunday night how the Seahawks, then owned by Ken Behring, pulled a Cleveland Browns 10 years ago and moved south.
The only difference is the Seahawks returned.
"The funniest thing about that was that my girlfriend at the time -- who is now my wife -- actually told me we were going to be moving before I knew it," Strong said. "I don't know how she got that inside information, but it was a weird time in the organization's history. That was two weeks of just, well, weirdness.
"We packed all our bags, moved all our equipment and computers and everything to Anaheim, California. And we were working out every day. It was very weird to be down there; not to know if we would have to move our families there. Everything was sort of in limbo. We were just waiting to get the word, but at the same time get ready for the season."
Now those same Seahawks are in their first Super Bowl, and -- wouldn't you know it? -- they're not given much chance of derailing the runaway Steelers. Oddsmakers have them a four-point underdog, and that's fine except Seattle won 13 of its last 14 starts and was the first seed in the NFC; Pittsburgh was the AFC's sixth seed.
There are myriad explanations, beginning with the strength of the AFC and the weakness of the NFC West. What oddsmakers are telling you is that it didn't matter who represented the conference; it would be favored because the AFC was superior. At least that was the perception.
