Largent’s Secret: Always Try to Improve

Steve Largent credits his success to following one of Earl Weaver’s old bromides.

Largent noted that Weaver, the former manager of the Baltimore Orioles, said, “The important thing is what you learn after you think you know it all. I never felt like I knew it all. I always kept working hard to learn more about the position I play.”

Largent, as usual, is underrating himself.

The 14-year receiver for the Seattle Seahawks probably knows everything there is to know about catching a football in the National Football League.

Largent, who was to play his last game Saturday against the Washington Redskins, holds virtually every major receiving record. He has caught more passes (817) for more yards (13,048) and more touchdowns (100) than any receiver in the history of the league.

He has also caught passes in 176 straight games, has had eight 1,000-yard seasons and has had 10 seasons of 50 catches or more. Those are all-time records, too.

Nobody seems more surprised than Largent by his success.

“My whole career has been like a dream to me. I pinch myself all the time to make sure I’m not (dreaming),” he said.

Largent did all this after the team that drafted him, the Houston Oilers, decided it did not have room for him in his rookie year in 1976 and traded him to Seattle.

Wade Phillips, the defensive coordinator of the Denver Broncos who was in Houston working for his father, Bum Phillips, at the time, said with a smile, “We might still be in Houston if we hadn’t traded him.”

It is typical of Largent that he says one of the reasons he has been successful is that he has played for two “very good” quarterbacks, Jim Zorn and Dave Krieg.

He overlooks the fact that Zorn never made the Pro Bowl and Krieg made it just twice. Largent made it seven times.

He showed his dedication to the game earlier this year when he went on the injured reserve list for six weeks with a hairline fracture of his right elbow.

Before practice each day, he ran through his assignment on every play in the game plan to keep sharp.

“There was a method in my madness,” he said. “I’ve seen too many guys kind of languish on injured reserve. I couldn’t afford to do that physically.” Coach Chuck Knox said, “He will be in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. No ifs, ands or buts about it.”

If there were a Hall of Fame for nice guys, he would be in that one, too. He is noted for the charity work he has done. Success hasn’t spoiled him.

Largent all but apologizes for his nice-guy reputation.

“I think it places a lot of pressure on me,” he said. “In some ways, I feel bad, because, as our coach says, you’re never as good or as bad as they say you are in the paper, and that’s certainly true with myself. I’m not the perfect parent. We don’t have the perfect family. I’m not Ozzie, and my wife’s not named Harriet.”

It figures, though, that Largent has organized a retirement party after Saturday’s game with the proceeds going to help the homeless.

He says he is the kind of person he is because there are “two very significant relationships in my life.”

He explained, “The first would be my relationship with Christ. I think this humility that the Bible talks about, when you step back and are able to look at the big picture, the things that I’ve accomplished on the football field take on a different perspective.”

He said the second relationship is with his wife, Terry. “Through it all, she’s helped me keep a realistic perspective on my life.”

They also survived a personal trauma when their fourth child, Kramer, 4, was born with spina bifida.

“That has a way of refocusing what your priorities are and how insignificant a lot of things are that we think are important,” he said.

The result is that he is involved with spina bifida along with United Cerebral Palsy, the March of Dimes, United Way and Children’s Hospital.

It is almost impossible to find anyone to say anything negative about Largent, although his first roommate with the Seahawks, Steve Raible, now a color analyst, said, “He’s a dreadful snorer.” That seems about it in the flaws department.

Largent does not expect the Seahawks to throw a lot to him Saturday just because it is his last game. He said the Seahawks have never tried to force passes to help him set records.

“I’m really proud about that,” he said.

There will be life after football for Largent. Broadcasting is one of his options, and TBS announced Tuesday that he will be one of the feature announcers for the 1990 Goodwill Games in Seattle. If there is a disappointment in Largent’s career, it is that he never played in the Super Bowl, but he does not want any sympathy.

“I have no regrets. It’s all been fun, and I’ll cherish every moment of it. To feel sorry for Steve Largent because he never got to play in the Super Bowl would be like feeling sorry for Donald Trump because he lost his billfold,” Largent said.