Humble beginnings aren’t hard to find in the National Football League, especially when you’re evaluating a team that’s as gritty as the Seattle Seahawks. It takes a special type of tenacity to make it to the Super Bowl, and even more is required if you’re hoping to take home the Lombardi and the Super Bowl MVP trophies.
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Even then, pure grit and toughness aren’t always enough to achieve your goals; you need a little bit of help along the way. Thankfully, the newly crowned champion, Kenneth Walker III, was able to find that in his former high school football coach.
“His mom and dad couldn’t drive him to an important meeting at Wake Forest,” Rich Eisen noted of Walker the morning after the 25-year-old was named the Super Bowl MVP.
“His assistant coach in high school, named Andrew Atkins, drove him the 10 hours to Wake Forest so he could get hooked up with Wake Forest, where he rolled.”
Walker soon made his way to Michigan State shortly afterwards, where he would go on to torch his then-undefeated Michigan Wolverines to the tune of 197 rushing yards and five touchdowns.
“He was K9 in green before he was K9 in green last night,” the veteran analyst begrudgingly recalled.
Walker single-handedly beat Michigan himself that day, ruining both Eisen’s day and the university’s bid for a perfect season well before their eventual loss in the Orange Bowl. Although that performance did help to make Eisen an advocate of his work before the masses had ever realized what kind of talent he possessed.
“This kid was all that… Kenneth Walker has been on our show’s radar screen for a while. To the point where, when he was in the draft, I was like, why is nobody taking him? Where is he right now? Why is nobody taking him? And then the Seattle Seahawks, and John Schneider, because he is really good at his job, eventually did… And he got it done, man. Last night, what a night.”
Now that he’s been able to rack up 161 scrimmage yards in order to stake his claim for being the best player on the biggest stage possible, it’s safe to say that the world is no longer sleeping on Walker. Although that’s not necessarily a good thing for Seattle, as they’ll now have to contend with the fact that their best and only healthy running back is about to hit the open market.
There are plenty of other contending teams that would be more than glad to pay top dollar for his services, so unless the Seahawks are able to come up with some extra cash, they may just have to bid Walker farewell right after he blessed them with one of the greatest performances in the history of their franchise.
