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CantStop85
08-01-2010, 01:11 AM
Sean Morey Announces Retirement
Finally, football is back.

Maybe I’m too excited for a team that has won only nine games in two years, but there is nothing better than starting a fresh season in the National Football League.
Renton was busy today; two separate practices in the morning and afternoon meant non-stop traffic between the Landing and the Virginia Mason Athletic Center. Local businesses proudly displayed posters featuring Seattle’s trademark “12″ and eager fans filled sidewalks wearing Seahawks apparel.

The morning opened with several stories, but none more surprising than Sean Morey’s retirement.

Sean Morey had been signed by the Seattle Seahawks last March after spending three seasons with division rival Arizona. Morey, a highly regarded special teamer and former Pro Bowl selection, was expected to improve Seattle’s coverage units this season.
Morey’s decision leaves the Seahawks with only eleven receivers in camp, but his contributions weren’t expected to be as an offensive player. With his departure, it creates a potential opportunity for another player who is in camp with the team.
While Morey would have been beneficial for Seattle’s special teams, his retirement isn’t necessarily the worst thing that could have happened to the franchise.

Rest of article:
http://12thmanrising.com/2010/07/31/sean-morey-announces-retirement/

I know he was a good special teamer with the Steelers and the Cardinals. Retirement comes as a bit of a surprise as the Seahawks just signed him this past spring. I imagine he's taken quite a beating over the years, though.

Galax Steeler
08-01-2010, 06:52 AM
Wow this is kind of a surprise.

st33lersguy
08-01-2010, 08:14 AM
Maybe he is just experiencing burnout

SMR
08-01-2010, 10:22 AM
Maybe he is just experiencing burnout

Just might be the case. Poor guy.

tony hipchest
08-01-2010, 03:16 PM
no burnout... concussions-

Great conversation tonight with an emotional Sean Morey, who had to retire (concussions). Read his story in MMQB. about 15 hours ago (https://twitter.com/SI_PeterKing/status/20044200027) via Twitter for BlackBerry® (http://blackberry.com/twitter)

looking forward to peter king's article tomorrow.

salamander
08-01-2010, 05:41 PM
If concussions are the reason, then by all means he's doing the right thing. No sense in causing permanent damage to himself. Nothing is worth jeopardizing your health.

tony hipchest
08-02-2010, 07:29 PM
bummer... he was the epitome of STEELER. nice to see him getting the respect he deserves. i always felt he was kinda underrated and maybe even underappreciated by steelerfans (you know... because he wasnt catching 70 balls a year).


Hustling through the Atlanta airport to make my flight to the next camp (Miami's, in this case), and on the phone I've got one of the very good guys I've covered in my career, Pats/Eagles/Steelers/Cardinals/Seahawks special-teamer Sean Morey. He's explaining his post-concussion-syndrome-prompted retirement, and I ask him: "What do you feel like right now, physically?''
"Like I just finished playing a tough game,'' he said, speaking softly from a Starbucks in Seattle. "Like I'd just made six or seven tackles.''
And, of course, it's been almost eight months since the 34-year-old Morey played. In the past couple of years, it had taken him longer each offseason to get back to his baseline, to feeling well with no lingering headaches from the season. This year, that time never came. And though he signed a multi-year deal with Seattle in the offseason to rejoin Pete Carroll, coach of the team that drafted him from Brown in 1999 (New England), he couldn't live a lie and pretend he was OK. Over the weekend, he was making arrangements to pay back the signing bonus the Seahawks gave him in March.
At least two independent doctors told him he shouldn't play. And as co-chair of the NFL Players Association's concussion and traumatic brain injury committee, Morey knew he couldn't be a good union leader if he swept such an important injury under the rug.
"He's unlike any player I've ever met,'' said NFLPA executive director DeMaurice Smith Sunday night. "In a game known for passion, Sean surpasses that with his dedication to players past, present and future. He's doing more than his part to make the game safer. He has an intensity for all that is right that is, frankly, all-consuming.''
Morey has walked a tightrope as a player trying to be one of the best special-teamers of this era (he was my special-teamer of the decade for 2000-09) and as a union man trying to get his peers to respect the brain trauma that so many players try to hide. "In many ways,'' he told me, "all the education I've gotten on the subject is a curse, but it also gave me the proper perspective to be able to make a decision like this one. I am held to a higher standard, and I should be. I owe it to the players in the game to help make changes that will help players going forward.''
Carroll told his first Seattle team about Morey's decision at his first team meeting the other night. He said Morey scratched and clawed to make the NFL, that his way to the league was paved with hardship and being cut multiple times. He even drove to Foxboro once in a furniture truck for a company he worked for, trying to get the Patriots to take another look at him after he'd been cut. That, Carroll said, is the kind of player he wanted with the Seahawks, and the room broke out in applause for Morey.
When Morey knew he had to tell Seahawk GM John Schneider and Carroll his decision last week, Carroll took it well. He picked up a football, and the two men went out to the field. They played catch.
"You know,'' Carroll said to Morey, throwing the ball in a tight spiral, "people ask me the best part of my job. I tell them, 'I get to go out and play catch.' ''
A couple of days later, the memory made Morey go quiet.
"That,'' he said, "was a nice touch. Football's the kind of game you love so much that you want to hold on 'til it throws you off. Because someday, for all of us, it will throw you off, no matter how tight you try to hang on.''


Read more: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2010/writers/peter_king/08/01/mmqb/2.html#ixzz0vb0TpO4A