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Raised on the gridiron

By Mike Kahn

Seahawks Insider

Tucked away in an obscure corner of the massive Seattle Seahawks locker room in their new Virginia Mason Athletic Center digs, the teammates that grew up in neighboring small towns more than 3,000 miles from the Pacific Northwest, threw down the gauntlet.

First, the Boston Celtics championship pennant came from Matt Hasselbeck.

Lofa Tatupu responded by throwing down his Boston Red Sox hat.

The two looked at each other and said, “We’re about both of those teams … the championships.”

The team they failed to mention, of course, happened to be the New England Patriots, which not coincidentally just happened to be the franchise that drew the two together as children raised in the burbs of Boston in the first place. And the experience of growing up in the shadow of their fathers - Patriots Don Hasselbeck and Mosi Tatupu - is in no small part at the heart of why Hasselbeck is the leader of the offense and Tatupu the defense at the outset of their fourth season together with the Seahawks.

What intertwines them not only is the route they took from childhood, but the lack of respect they dealt with on the way to reaching their present status in the NFL.

Hasselbeck was acquired via trade in 2001 from Green Bay, but really didn’t take over as the fulltime starting quarterback until the 2003 season. He and Trent Dilfer battled it out through various circumstances for Seahawks coach Mike Holmgren, who first got a whiff of Hasselbeck in the 1998 draft - a sixth round pick at the time of his Packers out of Boston College. Still, it raised some eyebrows when Holmgren, after becoming the Seahawks coach and general manager in 1999, traded for him to be the quarterback-to-be with the Seahawks - having thrown all of 29 passes in three years with the Packers.

Tatupu was snubbed coming out of high school and ended up beginning his college football career at Maine. He eventually transferred to the University of Southern California and became an All-American. But even then the Seahawks were dogged when they traded up to get the allegedly “too-small, too-slow” middle linebacker in the second round of the 2005 draft. Nonetheless, he’s been the starter from Day 1.

It doesn’t take any great insight for it to register what has happened since the two have collaborated. Both have been to the Pro Bowl three times, the Seahawks are 32-16 in the three seasons, with three NFC West titles and a 2005 NFC Championship – plus a 4-3 record in the playoffs.

“That’s not where we want to be yet,” Tatupu said. “But it’s a start.”