Dashing duo

KIRKLAND, Wash. – For most of the past two years, Shaun Alexander and Edgerrin James have been tied together despite the obvious geographical differences. Both are NFL running backs whose free-agent interludes overlapped. Both expected big-time offers from eager suitors but received none and eventually got saddled with the dreaded “franchise” tag. Their contract negotiations had become so

mutual that they stopped reading about one another and picked up the telephone.

“We didn’t talk about being franchised,” Alexander said of the numerous phone conversations he had with James while both were franchise players. “We talked about money. … We know the league talks to each other, that teams talk to each other, but me and Edge probably set the standard for two players talking to each other. We probably talked to each other (on the phone) more than any two players ever.”

When the two running backs take the field for Sunday’s game between Alexander’s Seattle Seahawks and James’s Arizona Cardinals, they’ll come together not only in proximity but also in terms of happy endings.

Alexander and James finally got their big contracts in March and came into the 2006 season without the financial gorilla they’d been carrying on their backs.

“I always knew Seattle would get it done,” Alexander said Thursday. “I was surprised that Edge wasn’t back in (Indianapolis), but Arizona did well with his contract. With that, it’s just business.”

Alexander got his deal – an eight-year deal that could pay up to almost $62 million – and also got to stay in familiar surroundings. He said all along that he expected to remain in Seattle but wasn’t always such a lock to return.

Unable to strike a deal with him in February 2005, the Seahawks made Alexander their franchise player and got him to sign a one-year contract.

Alexander then went out and had an MVP season, and got rewarded with both the long-term deal and the invitation to return to the Seahawks.

“It just didn’t make any sense for him to go anyplace else,” fullback Mack Strong said. “Not with the team that we had, the success that we had. But at the same time, the dollars have to line up.”

James also got his deal but had to move halfway across the country. After being franchised by the Indianapolis Colts in 2004 and 2005, James became a free agent again in the spring and was given the opportunity to test the market. The Cardinals lured him with a four-year, $30 million contract.

“I came because it fit,” James told Arizona reporters over the summer. “(It was) everything I was looking for. I have a coach (Dennis Green) running a system similar to what I was playing under. I got two receivers (Larry Fitzgerald and Anquan Boldin). You know how much pressure that takes off a running back?”

James has already made an impression on his new teammates.

“He brings so much to the table that we couldn’t be more excited to have a guy like him in the locker room,” quarterback Kurt Warner said in a conference call this week.

Seattle running backs coach Stump Mitchell, who has been there for Alexander’s entire career and has watched James from afar, believes the accomplished runners have a few things in common.

“They’re both major parts of the success of the teams they’ve been with,” Mitchell said. “Things are going to revolve around Edgerrin with the Cardinals, and the same is going to be true with us (in terms of Alexander).”

There is a school of thought that the big contracts could take away some of the competitive edge for both running backs, but Mitchell knows that won’t be the case with Alexander.

“There are a lot of things that money can’t buy,” Mitchell said. “And Shaun is all about records, all about being No. 1. That’s what motivates him.”

Two of Alexander’s main targets include the all-time NFL records in rushing TDs and rushing yards. Alexander, with 89 in his first seven seasons, is more than halfway to Emmitt Smith’s record of 164 rushing touchdowns. Smith’s record of 18,355 rushing yards might be a more difficult milestone for Alexander, who has 7,868. But Alexander is still taking aim.

“When I first got here, my rookie year, Stump and I sat down and looked at all the Seahawk records,” Alexander said. “And then my second year, we sat down and looked at all the NFL records. And we haven’t looked at the Seahawk records since I was a rookie. We’re still going after all the NFL records like we did my second year.”