When they’re not playing football, the Seattle Seahawks are shadow boxing. It gets competitive

By Hannah Keyser, CNN

San Jose, California (CNN) — Jarran Reed, the Seattle Seahawks veteran defensive tackle, was asked something about his favorite part of Super Bowl week. But just then, a battle was breaking out on a podium just a few yards away.

Derick Hall had climbed up onto the dais where Ernest Jones IV was seated for the team’s media availability to challenge his fellow linebacker to a quick game of shadow boxing.

“Hey! Hey, you saw that, Spoon?” Reed shouted across the convention center ballroom to cornerback Devon Witherspoon. It was worth paying attention to because a surprising upset was taking place.

Hall had just beaten Jones in shadow boxing and – admittedly CNN Sports’ source for this is Jones himself – Hall was 2-12 against Jones during the season.

“Like, he’s terrible,” Jones said.

And that is Reed’s favorite part of Super Bowl week: The shadow boxing.

“Oh it gets real,” Reed said.

Wait, what?

The shadow boxing started during organized team activities last spring as one of several games the Seahawks played. (Again, according to Jones himself, he and Tyrice Knight won the OTAs tournament.)

During team meetings, head coach Mike Macdonald encouraged them to compete at things like ping pong, free throw contests, “all the different sports,” linebacker DeMarcus Lawrence added.

“But it just got to a point where it’s like, nah, we just gotta fight for it,” Lawrence said. “It just became just straight shadow boxing. It was no other competition but shadow boxing for the rest of the year.”

Now, we know what you’re thinking. And the rules of shadow boxing are convoluted and complicated to explain in writing. It’s a game of hand motions played rapidly between two opponents that ends up looking like a cross between, well, shadow boxing and voguing.

But that’s not the important part anyway.

The important part is: Who is the best at shadow boxing on the Seahawks?

“Oh, you lookin’ at him,” Witherspoon said, and he has at least some teammates willing to support his case.

“I hate to say it, but Spoon is probably number one,” Jones said. “I fall in the number two-ish category.”

And others who are not.

“It’s not Spoon,” Reed said. “Spoon’s an easy fade.”

“See, everybody has their own style of fighting. And I think, because it’s our first year of doing it, we can’t say who is the best. Because, you know, some guys have good weeks and then the next week they just fall off,” Lawrence, a diplomatic 12-year veteran of the league who is new to Seattle this season, said. “But you know, just seeing all the different styles of fighting in the locker room is pretty incredible.”

The locker room, and everywhere else.

“We literally just shadow boxed right before we came in here,” Witherspoon said.

“We do it every day,” Jones said. “Every moment, every second. Every day — 6 a.m., 4 a.m. it’s going down.”

They’ve brought it home to their families. Witherspoon plays it with his girlfriend. Reed and Jones both have taught their young sons how to play.

“He’s actually pretty good,” said Jones, whose credibility about his record against Hall is called into question just a little considering his son is not yet two years old and Jones admits: “He beats me a lot.”

Meanwhile Reed is hoping his son’s early start will give him a leg up on the competition in the surely forthcoming National Shadow Boxing League. “I think there will be one soon,” he said.

Any chance to shadow box, the players will seize upon. Even during actual football games.

“That’s how we refocus and get ourselves centered,” Jones said. “So the D-line has had full-on shadow boxing fights coming out of halftime.”

“It’s just something when you have a bunch of young, talented guys in a room, competitive guys,” Lawrence said, “any way that they can find to compete and to play.”

And that gets at what is actually important about this shared obsession. The Seahawks are loose but hungry for victory. It’s hardly a surprise that a team of professional athletes likes games and winning, competing and trash talking, challenging each other and finding common ground.

But at this level — the biggest stage in the most commodified sport — it’s easy to imagine how it might start to feel more like a business or a product. Or like there’s too much pressure to feel very playful even when you’re playing.

The Seahawks, however, never stop playing.

On Thursday morning, the team engaged in another one of their new traditions this year — the walk-and-talk. Coach Macdonald asked them, on the near eve of the Super Bowls itself, what they will remember about this team in 10 years.

“I think shadow boxing was probably the most popular answer,” he said.

Even if they win the Super Bowl?

“Oh yeah, we’re gonna talk about that, too,” Witherspoon said.

The-CNN-Wire
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