Who's the most underrated Seahawk? I'm guessing you'll be surprised by my pick

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28-05-2025

I believe that Shaun Alexander is the most underrated Seahawk of the past 25 years.
I know that may sound ridiculous given how much attention he received in the eight seasons he played for the Seahawks. He was a first-round pick, after all, and remains the only player in franchise history to be named the league's MVP.
Others will reject my contention outright, dismissing Alexander as a self-interested player who shied away from contact and was only the fourth-best player on the 2005 team. I actually think this reaction proves my point, but I'm getting a bit ahead of myself.
Finally, there are some of you who will think that I'm kind of reaching to come up with a topic, and this is undeniably true. It was either this or another column about how the Mariners are doing surprisingly well, Dan Wilson sure looks like a good fit at manager and Julio Rodriguez is coming around, but you can't be sure they'll keep it up. They are the Mariners after all.
The truth is that I have always been fascinated by Alexander. Not so much him personally, as the local feelings about him.
He is statistically one of the two or three most productive players in the history of an increasingly impressive franchise. He also drew the loudest cheers in 2005 on Seattle's route to its first Super Bowl appearance. Yet if you were making a Mount Rushmore for this franchise, not only would Alexander not be on it, I'm not sure how many Seahawks fans would include him on their list of the 10 best players in franchise history.
That's kind of remarkable when you consider that Alexander owns the franchise records for rushing yards in a career (9,429), rushing yards in a single season (1,880), rushing yards in a single game (266) and career touchdowns (122). He rushed for more than 1,000 yards in five successive seasons.
I'm not trying to say that Alexander is the best running back in franchise history. I just don't think he was the third or fourth-best, either, and so many people have concluded he was overrated that I believe he is now underrated.
I understand the reason for this. He ran behind an offensive line that included two Hall of Famers: Walter Jones and Steve Hutchinson. He was a running back who'd step out of bounds instead of taking a hit. He wasn't a good pass protector and didn't seem all that interested in improving.
He was also prone to thinking about himself first. He complained he'd been 'stabbed in the back' when the Seahawks chose to run a quarterback sneak from the 1-yard line at the end of the regular-season finale instead of handing him the ball. Sure, the sneak resulted in a touchdown and that touchdown put Seattle in the playoffs, but it also left Alexander 1 yard short of Curtis Martin in the race for the league's rushing title.
The following year provided a more comical example of Alexander's self-awareness or lack thereof. In the second half of the season, journalist Tim Keown was assigned to do a story on Alexander and the Seahawks for ESPN The Magazine. According to Keown, Alexander explained his idea for a cover photo: the Seahawks offensive linemen—a group that included Hutchinson, Jones and Robbie Tobeck—would dress as elves and stand behind Alexander who would be seated in a chair, wearing a Santa suit with the Lombardi Trophy and MVP in his lap. Proposed caption: 'All I Want for Christmas.' Now, this was not in fact the cover ESPN The Magazine went with, but I have liked to imagine the face Hutchinson made when he heard that someone thought he should dress up as an elf.
I began covering the Seahawks in August 2005, and in Alexander's final three years on the team, I became acquainted with the gap between how Alexander saw himself and the effect he had on those around him. Much of this was completely harmless: Shaun being Shaun.
I also think that we began to focus so much on what he wasn't as a player, that we lost sight of the things he did (exceptionally) well.
We focused on the hits he turned down, and forgot about the vision that led to six runs of 50 or more yards in his eight seasons with Seattle. Marshawn Lynch, who was certainly a tougher runner than Alexander, had three regular-season runs of 50 or more in his seven seasons with the Seahawks.
Of the ten biggest single-season rushing totals in franchise history, Alexander is responsible for four of them. No one else has more than two.
If you think that Alexander left hundreds of yards on the table because he went down too easy, well, you must believe that Alexander should have been one of the most prolific runners in the history of the league. The 7,504 yards he rushed for from 2001 through 2005 stands on its own as a truly remarkable total. There are just three players in NFL history who've ever rushed for more than 8,000 yards over a five-year span: Barry Sanders, Eric Dickerson and Emmitt Smith. Walter Payton's highest total in a single five-year span was 7,707 while O.J. Simpson's was 7,699 and Adrian Peterson ran up 7,508.
Alexander couldn't sustain his peak like those other guys did. His productivity declined dramatically after he signed a multi-year contract in 2006, missing six games that season because of a foot injury. He finished with 896 yards that year, and by the end of the following season, it was clear the burst he'd once had evaporated. The Seahawks released him following the 2007 season, and while he signed with Washington midway through the following season, he lasted only four games before he was let go, finishing his career with 9,453 yards.
It's a number that seems to look smaller the farther we get from Alexander's career, and that's too bad. He was a hell of a running back.
Danny O'Neil was born in Oregon, the son of a logger, but had the good sense to attend college in Washington. He's covered Seattle sports for 20 years, writing for two newspapers, one glossy magazine and hosting a daily radio show for eight years on KIRO 710 AM. You can subscribe to his free newsletter and find his other work at dannyoneil.com.