Now, They Look Up To Sarge After Three Seasons, Ewu Product Feels Like A Veteran With Bengals
As he probably should with three National Football League seasons behind him, Kevin Sargent feels like a veteran.
In that time, he’s learned two important things:
1) What it takes to DO the job at left tackle in the NFL.
2) What it takes to KEEP a job in the National Football League.
“Yeah, I guess I do feel like a veteran now,” the Eastern Washington University product said. “Now, they ask me sometimes, ‘What do you think you should do in this situation?’ and they actually think I would have an educated opinion.
“On the other hand, I know I can’t be comfortable and let up in any way. I feel I have to prove myself every week, actually, pretty much every practice.
“I’m not athletically gifted enough that I can coast through even one practice,” he said.
The 6-foot-6, 284-pound Bremerton High graduate will once again be starting at left tackle when the 2-0 Cincinnati Bengals visit the Seattle Seahawks in the Kingdome.
Although the wins have not come against particularly impressive opponents (Indianapolis and Jacksonville), they were nonetheless victories to a team that was in desperate need of them.
“It’s mostly confidence,” Sargent said of his team’s small streak of success. “But we can’t get ahead of ourselves. We’re not like a Dallas that can look forward to a November game against the Niners. We’ve got to go at it week by week.”
There are changes, though, beyond the simple matter of confidence.
“I think offensively we’re more consistent - even though our third-down conversion percentage is low because we were 0-9 against Indianapolis - and our defensive pass rush has been really good.
“And one thing we’ve been able to do that we haven’t been is stay out of situations where we’re facing third-and-a-million instead of just a reasonable third-and-4.”
Sargent came to Cincinnati as an undrafted free agent and used good balance, quick feet and natural leverage to become a starter in 26 games at left tackle - pulling in slightly less than $600,000 last year.
“Sarge has experienced just about everything in his three years,” said Paul Alexander, Bengals offensive-line coach. “That includes an injury that kept him from being at his best last year. But he played hard all year, and this year, we’d like to see everything come together for him.”
As an unknown rookie from a Division I-AA school, Sargent was asked to come in and replace injured Anthony Munoz - an impossible task on the order of taking over a quarterback spot owned by Joe Montana.
The next year, Sargent had the job to himself, but on the second play of the season opener against Cleveland, he broke his forearm and missed the entire season.
The notion that his upper-body strength might not meet NFL standards was one that Sargent has fought all along. And the arm injury set him back in that area.
“Having surgery (after the injury) and then another on that following January to re-fix it, I basically didn’t lift anything that whole off-season,” he said. “And then during the next season, you can’t really lift to build up new strength. So coming into last January, it was like starting from scratch. “I made good gains once I got going, but it was just frustrating to see how much I had dwindled down strength-wise. It was really amazing that I couldn’t lift hardly anything at all.”
Sargent said he will likely have to leave the assorted hardware that has been implanted into that arm where it is until his career is over. Which, barring further injury, could be quite some time from now.
In last week’s game against Jacksonville, for instance, Sargent blanked sack specialist Jeff Lageman.
“You watch the films and you take the good stuff you did and try to build on that,” Sargent said. “He’s a really good player and he got me a few times, but he didn’t get any sacks.
“My arm is back to 100 percent. It took a long time but it’s finally back where it was.”
Sargent has another EWU alum on the team in Trent Pollard, who serves as the backup right guard.
“He’s doing great,” Sargent said. “They wanted him to get his weight down and he’s done that…He made his weight of 315 the last couple weeks.”
When Sargent returned to the Kingdome as a rookie in 1992, he bought tickets for family and friends through the Bengals. “But they all were up in the 300 level,” he said.
This time, knowing that the game is expected to draw sparse fan interest, he suggested to the 30 or 40 friends expected to attend that they should “pick up the tickets themselves because you can get better tickets by looking in the newspaper ads than I can get through the team.” , DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo