No Talk, All Action New Hawks Center Shies Away From Personal Feats To Discuss Team Goals

Newsflash! There’s a place in professional football for someone with a resume larger than his ego.

For someone who talks trash only on the day each week he has to remember curbside pick-up.

For someone - are you sitting down? - reluctant to discuss his accomplishments.

That place? At center for the Seattle Seahawks.

The unusual character manning that position is Jim Sweeney, a free-agent acquisition who toiled 11 seasons for the New York Jets.

Here’s an example of an interview with Sweeney:

Jim, your strength borders on legendary. How many bench-press repetitions did you do with 315 pounds when tested by the Seahawks?

“I don’t remember,” he said. “That was a while ago.”

He did a team-high 16, and he remembered all along.

The story goes that in 11 years in the NFL, Jim, you’ve rarely been called for holding. How many times has it been?

“Oh, I don’t know, I’ve been pretty lucky, I guess,” he said.

It was only twice - once against current teammate Joe Nash. And yes, he knew the answer.

Why are you so reluctant to toast your own skills, Jim?

“Oh, just modest, I guess,” he said.

There’s nothing modest about the skills possessed by Sweeney, who was a Pro Bowl player in 1989 and was named first-team all-pro by Sports Illustrated that year.

The free-agency movement that took Seahawks starter Ray Donaldson to Dallas also made it possible for the Hawks to pick up Sweeney as his replacement for $3.1 million over three years.

“I thought I had pretty good roots (with the Jets), but those roots got yanked out of the ground,” Sweeney said. “It could have been handled different, but I guess it’s understandable the way things are now.

“The way I look at it, they did me a big favor. If those roots were yanked out there, well, I’ve been put in some good soil here and they’re rooting well again.”

No, Sweeney did not get a degree in botany from the University of Pittsburgh - despite the above dissertation on the effects of transplantation.

What he has studied, though, is the history of proud and durable centers in the National Football League - whose legacy he has extended by starting his last 158 consecutive games.

“The centers before me set the precedent,” said Sweeney, who turns 33 next week. “There are a lot of good role models - Jim Otto, Dave Dalby, Ray Mansfield and Mike Webster, my personal favorite.”

The last time he didn’t start a game was 1984, his rookie season. With Seattle going into the season with young Kevin Mawae, Jeff Blackshear and James Atkins manning the guard posts, Sweeney’s experience is doubly important.

“He gives us a lot of leadership up front,” Seahawks head coach Dennis Erickson said. “He’s got a couple young guys next to him and he can make a lot of calls and help those young guys get better. He adds a lot to us as far as that goes.”

Added Sweeney, “I guess I’ve seen everything there is to see on the line, and there’s some young guys who are eager to learn, so hopefully I can help them out a bit.”

The 6-foot-4, 284-pound Sweeney benefits from astounding leg strength, reportedly having leg-pressed 1,400 pounds twice. His drive-blocking ability against a nose guard can punch holes in 3-4 defenses, while his pass protection appears flawless - and legal.

“I seriously try not to hold,” Sweeney said. “I try to do it right every play. Sure, you do hold on occasion and sometimes it’s not called if it’s away from the play. But it’s important to me to try to do it right every time.”

His father, a Marine, instilled that philosophy in Sweeney at a tender age.

“I think I was lucky growing up with the kind of dad I had; he’s very disciplined and we were only told to do something once. You learned real quickly to listen the first time.

“And one thing he impressed on me was that you don’t have to be able to do a lot of things, but you need to be able to do at least one thing very, very well.”

Which Sweeney has for more than a decade.

In that time, he claims, he hasn’t seen a team with more young talent than the Seahawks have.

“I was a little apprehensive about coming here at first; anytime you’ve been in one spot for 11 years you get accustomed to it,” he said. “But there’s more talent here than I’ve been around.”

In the tradition of iron-man centers, which Sweeney cherishes, he’s not anticipating retirement.

“I’ve been doing this for some 25 years, since I was 9 years old,” he said. “I’d like to get up to 200 (consecutive starts) because there’s not a lot of people who could say that.

“But that’s just a personal goal and if there was anything to come between team success and stretching that streak, the team would come first. For me, that’s the way it’s always been and always will be.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo