Hawks assistant remembers Tillman

KIRKLAND, Wash. – The landscape has changed since Larry Marmie coached his last game as defensive coordinator of the Arizona Cardinals three years ago.

Gone are the coaches, most of the players and even the old team logo. Gone are the familiar walks through the tunnels of Sun Devil Stadium, now that the Cardinals have moved into a new facility in Glendale.

When Marmie returns to Arizona as a defensive assistant with the Seattle Seahawks this weekend, there won’t be many things that look familiar at all.

“It’ll be special,” Marmie said this week of returning to the area where he coached college and pro football for 15 years.

One thing will be more special than anything else. Really, it’s has little to do with football, even though that was the first embrace that brought Marmie and one of his favorite people together.

On Sunday morning, when the Seahawks arrive in Glendale to take in the new University of Phoenix Stadium, Marmie plans on spending some time with Pat Tillman.

Not the real, living, larger-than-life hero that the former Cardinals safety became, but the statue that bears his memory.

“I’m looking forward to that very much,” Marmie said of seeing the bronze statue that was unveiled last month to honor the former NFL player who was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan on April 22, 2004.

“That’s the first thing I’ll do when we get to the stadium. I’ve thought about that a lot.”

Marmie isn’t the only person in the Seahawks organization planning to look at the statue. Some of those who never met Tillman plan to pay their respects.

“He sacrificed for something he loved,” said rookie Darryl Tapp, whose older brother Charles II served a year in Iraq and works in Virginia. “He sacrificed in order for the rest of us. It’s unfortunate that he had to give up his life, but it’s been greatly appreciated.”

One Seahawks player who hasn’t decided how he feels about the memorial is former Cardinal Russell Davis, who spent three seasons as Tillman’s teammate.

“It’s hard for me sometimes hearing some of the things going on because I knew him, and I knew he wasn’t that kind of man,” Davis said of the attention Tillman’s death has received.

“He wouldn’t want to be on the cover of People magazine. He wouldn’t want his statue built and his jersey retired.”

When Davis thinks of Tillman, he sees not the hero but the ordinary man, the one who preferred T-shirts and cargo shorts and drove to work every day in a 1988 Jeep Cherokee.

Marmie, who joined the Seahawks this year after spending the past two seasons working with the St. Louis Rams, knew Tillman better than many of his teammates did.

Marmie and Tillman developed a close relationship after the Cardinals selected the Arizona State University product in the seventh round of the 1998 NFL draft.

The two were so close that Marmie was one of the first peo-ple Tillman told of his plans to quit playing football so he could join the Army.

Their bond was so strong that Marmie still keeps in touch with Tillman’s mother, Mary.

Marmie vividly remembers the first time he met Pat Tillman, during Pro Day at the ASU campus in the spring of 1998. Tillman was an undersized linebacker who was trying to make the transition to safety, and Marmie was in his third year as the Cardinals’ secondary coach.

Tillman struggled through some of the drills, mainly because of the position change, and he seemed frustrated with his lack of perfection.

“I can remember at the end, there was one (drill) that he wasn’t pleased with,” Marmie said. “As we were leaving, he kept calling us to come on back: ‘Let me do that one over. I can do that one better.’ “

In the end, not many NFL scouts showed much confidence in Tillman. The Cardinals watched 225 other players get picked before selecting him in the seventh round of the April draft, and then Tillman went on to have a productive career that saw him start 39 games in five NFL seasons.

Like most Americans, Tillman was profoundly affected by the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. He eventually made a commitment to serve his country, turning his back on a three-year, $3.6 million offer from the Cardinals to go to Army Ranger school in 2002.

Less than two years later, Tillman was dead, the victim of “friendly fire” in Afghanistan. His end was met with more media attention than any military death in history, leaving behind an American legacy.

“This is a man who had a bright future, plenty of money, and the fame of people looking up to him. But he felt like there was something more important out there,” Davis said.