The Seattle locker room is a brotherhood. It’s a place where we can talk politics or talk shit, and the coaches believe strongly that we need to be ourselves. We need to be men. We don’t “belong to the team,” like one jackass columnist wrote about me last year. We belong to ourselves and to each other. In some other NFL locker rooms, if that kind of political environment developed and people were talking about real life in emotional voices, coaches would step in to say, “Don’t bring those politics in here.” There are teams whose head coaches even try to get players to sign a code of conduct, promising not to “bring politics into the locker room.” That’s a bullshit way of trying to keep people in a box. It’s also insulting: telling a group of grown-ass men basically not to talk to each other. Many players are willing to accept those kinds of terms on their humanity. But if a coach said to me, “I don’t want you saying those things,” I’d be like, “Then stop listening. It’s our locker room. Take your ass upstairs.” In our locker room, a critical mass doesn’t play that.
Our team is different. We talk about race issues. We talk about the NCAA. We talk about how to support one another’s foundation work. When people sign with our team and see how community-based the Seahawks are, and how we talk to one another, they’re overwhelmed: “Wow, your team pushes you to be out there, they push you to give back.” We reply, “No! Our team doesn’t push us to do it. We push ourselves.”
Early on in Seattle, I joked, “My only friends on the team are Benjamin and Franklin.” That was me trying to be funny. It also couldn’t be further from the truth. My teammates are my brothers. Most people go to work and hate their coworkers or never get to know them. They spend more time with their coworkers than with their own kids, but they never learn what makes them tick. This is one of the very few jobs where you need to be intertwined with those other people spiritually, because every movement you make has an end result—if you win or if you lose, if you walk off the field or if you’re carried off.
We’ve gone from teammates to brothers even though our backgrounds, educations, and even home countries are different. I can’t tell you how emotional it was for me when Justin Britt, our offensive lineman and a leader in our locker room, a white dude from Lebanon, Missouri, put his hand on my shoulder while I sat during the anthem during the preseason of 2017. It felt like Brian’s Song, like we were Gale Sayers and Brian Piccolo, except neither of us had to die. Afterward, Justin said to the media, “I’m going to continue talking with Mike and exploring and just helping myself understand things. I wanted to take a first step tonight. And that’s what I felt like I did.” He even told the press that if he didn’t see things getting better in this country, he’d sit with me. That’s a brother.
I think about Cliff Avril, how we’ve worked together in this intense environment and gotten to know each other’s families. We started out with different ideas about how to bring change into the world, and we’ve chosen to intertwine them because we’re both passionate about helping people. He’s seen what I do in Seattle, and I’ve gone with him to Haiti to see the remarkable work he does there. We may approach things differently, but we share the same soul.
The journey of moving from teammates to brothers is like nothing else. Yes, ego and money can get in the way. It takes the right people, the right team, and the right city, but when everything comes together it’s a blessing. Every time you go out there and take the field, you don’t just represent your team or your city. You represent each other in a way that’s personal. I know if I make a mistake, Cliff Avril can get hurt, and then I’ve got to look his wife, Tia, and their children in the eyes. When you reach that level of brotherhood, I truly believe that’s when you win. You lose the ego, and it stops being about you. It’s about the people around you. People get it backward and think winning is the end goal. But when the goal is brotherhood, the winning will come and mean so much more. Your locker room isn’t just a place with coworkers or people trying to make bank. You transcend the money and the accolades that come with it. You are tied to one another spiritually and physically, not just at the workplace but outside the workplace as well. You feel their pain when they get injured. You cry with their wives. You mourn with them when members of their family pass. You work on their projects, you go to their children’s birthday parties, their anniversary celebrations, and you leave this league as someone more than when you entered.
Let’s talk about who makes up the core of this brotherhood in Seattle. I should say that one of the reasons we’re brothers is because a lot of us have chips on our shoulders. “Chip” doesn’t even do it justice. Call it a boulder. Call it Pikes Peak.
