Burleson glad to be back home

The city of Seattle is no longer a vacation spot for Nate Burleson.

The Seattle native left home in 1999 after he graduated from O’Dea High School to play football for Nevada. Soon after, Burleson was signed by the Minnesota Vikings, where he played for three years and traveled home to Seattle on his time off.

But the 24-year-old wide receiver has returned to his roots since the Seattle Seahawks acquired him as a restricted free agent on March 31.

“Anytime I’m back home I’m enjoying myself,” Burleson said. “I have a little bit of stability and I’m rooted where I’m at.

“It feels good to buy a home and start searching for schools to put my children in, and really do the things that my mother and father did for me.”

This is Burleson’s fourth season in the National Football League, but this past week in Cheney he has been becoming familiar with Seattle’s way of doing things.

“It’s a long process everyday,” he said of adapting to the Hawks. “I’m trying to keep my eyes and ears open and try and learn something new. Until I retire, I’m going to try to learn each day and that’s what I’m doing here.”

One thing he’s working on is making a connection with quarterback Matt Hasselbeck on the field.

“We’re not going to know each other’s game yet, but hopefully by the time the season starts we can have great chemistry to where when we go out on the field he knows what I’m thinking and I know what he’s thinking,” Burleson said of Hasselbeck.

Burleson is ready to begin the season after injuries, such as a posterior cruciate ligament tear in his knee and sprained cartilage in his rib cage, limited his playing time last season in Minnesota. But while Burleson is healthy, Seattle’s wide receiver Darrell Jackson is recovering from knee surgery and won’t be back until late August. D.J. Hackett will also miss a couple of weeks with a strained right hamstring, leaving Burleson to fill Jackson’s spot.

“I’m heavier and stronger than I’ve ever been my whole entire life so I’m excited,” Burleson said.

It was never a goal of Burleson’s to make it to the NFL and it also was never a goal to return back to the Northwest after high school. Rather, it was something that Burleson hoped would happen. He never made it out to Seahawks training camps growing up, but he still kept his eyes open, he said.

“I didn’t think I would actually play for the Seattle Seahawks,” he said. “But everything happens for a reason and now that I have returned full circle back to where I was raised, it seems like everything was how it’s supposed to be.”

Even if Burleson never played for the Seahawks, he said he still would have found himself back in Seattle because he loves the city so much.

He compared the Hawks training camp to back in Minnesota and considers the facilities at Eastern Washington University “first class,” but insists he doesn’t care where he practices as long as he has the necessities.

“You can place me anywhere as long as I’ve got my teammates and my football,” Burleson said. “I’ll be all right.”

But while the facilities may be “first class,” the new Seahawks receiver is feeling the grind of the two-a-day practices they’ve had all week.

“It seems as soon as that alarm goes off that’s when your body is really relaxed,” he said.

“If you allow your body to beat your mind then you’re not going to improve that day. So we have to set all the things aside – the wear and tear – and just go out there and improve mentally if your body is not responding.”

But the team wasn’t doing what Seattle coach Mike Holmgren wanted at Friday morning’s practice. Holmgren called practice almost an hour early and sent the team inside.

“We went to the locker room and everyone looked at themselves in the mirror and refocused to be ready for the next practice,” Burleson said. “There’s times when we’re not going to play as well as we should and there’s times coaches are not going to like everything we do, but it’s all about bouncing back and trying to respond as quickly as we can.”

Burleson is viewing today’s scrimmage as any other practice, but he admits he’d like to make some plays since some familiar faces will be in the crowd.

“We don’t want to get anybody injured, we just want to go and do what we’ve been doing these last few days at practice and make plays,” he said. “I’ve got some family coming out, so I want to make a few catches, hopefully get in the end zone and continue what we’ve been doing so far.”

With Burleson working in his hometown, he expects to have a lot of family members requesting tickets for Seattle’s home games.

“If I get 30 or 40 people requesting tickets on game day, I’m going to have to direct them to my father or something,” he joked.

Notes

The Eastern Washington winds proved to be a challenge for some of the kick returners during the afternoon practice. The wind caused players to misjudge the ball’s location during kick return drills, but when special teams coach Bob Casullo yelled, “The wind is going to blow in Seattle,” no more balls were dropped.

“Eleven-year-old Stephen Miller from Georgia was granted a wish to meet his favorite Seahawks stars through the Make-A-Wish foundation. Miller, who suffers from Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, became a Seahawks fan last year when David Greene was selected by the Hawks in the 2005 draft out of Georgia. After the afternoon practice, players stopped by Miller to shake his hand and pose for pictures.