The Seattle Seahawks were pushed into the national spotlight against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers with a Sunday morning game in Germany, but another topic about them went viral on social media.
Seahawks veteran receiver Tyler Lockett is being debated online about how he tends to catch passes and immediately falls to the ground to avoid taking big hits to his head and body.
A video from last month highlighted some of those plays:
On Friday from Germany, Lockett hit back at those fans calling him out.
“This was like one of the first times I fell short of a [first] down and everybody just thinks I always fall short,” Lockett said, via Brady Henderson of ESPN.com. “I just think, for me, people don’t understand how physical the game of football is or how physical it can be. Yeah, you can take hits or you can choose not to take hits. When I was in college — I told you guys this before — one of my coaches, Andre Coleman, was like, ‘Look at Torry Holt. Look at Isaac Bruce. They catch what they can, they get what they could get and then they get down.’
“A lot of people could call you soft or whatever the case is, but they don’t understand the things that we see when you’re done playing football. When people talk about CTE or people talk about injuries and having to get all these different surgeries after they’re done. Everybody wants you to put your body on the line. For what? Your entertainment? Your amusement, whatever? For us, we put our bodies on the line every single day and so just because you don’t make a first down doesn’t mean whatever the stuff is that people say.”
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Fan reaction:
“I thought I had the first down, you know what I mean?” Lockett said. “I don’t see the yellow line like everyone else gets to see. So on TV, I get it. But they make TV easier for anybody to know. What’s the first down? They’ve just got to get to that yellow line. For me, I just made a mistake. I didn’t get the first down. I should have got the first down. Things could have been different, but I did it, you learn from it, you keep it moving. But this game is also about durability and if you’re not able to go because you’re not healthy, then it’s the next man up. So I try not to get too caught up in it because people don’t know the injuries I’ve been dealing with, like when we talked about the last couple of weeks and all that type of stuff. They’re just like, ‘You should have done this, this and this.’ So you’ve just got to take it with a grain of salt, but you can’t please anybody, especially the Internet.”
Lockett will win this argument because “business decisions” are sometimes a part of the game, too.
The 30-year-old Lockett has spent his entire career with the Seattle Seahawks. He has been very successful in that time as he has hauled in 503 catches for 6,707 yards and 50 touchdowns.
So far in 2022, he has 54 catches for 640 yards and five touchdowns.
The Seahawks head into their bye at 6-4 after a loss to the Tampa Bay Bucs in Germany. They still sit in first place in the NFC West.
