Seymour has bad intentions on Sunday
By Jerry McDonald - NFL Writer
Thursday, November 18th, 2010 at 2:56 pm in Oakland Raiders.
Something happens to Richard Seymour on game day.
During the week, Seymour is Mr. Diplomacy, deflecting all compliments toward the team, responding to questions in a tone befitting a candidate for public office, usually with an easy smile and friendly manner.
In that way, Seymour is similar to former Raiders guard Steve Wisniewski, a devoted Christian and family man who spoke in team-oriented clichés only to enrage, instigate and aggravate on game day.
Wisniewski played snap to whistle and sometimes beyond, drawing his share of penalty flags.
Against Denver last year, cameras caught Seymour yanking hard on the hair of Broncos tackle Ryan Clady.
“Richard is a soft-spoken quiet kind of guy,’’ defensive coordinator John Marshall said. “But as you study film of Richard, Richard is not a very nice man on the football field. All I can say is Richard takes care of business.’’
“He’s a bully,’’ said Tommy Kelly, who lines up next to Seymour. “As a D-lineman you’ve got to have a mean streak. I don’t take no (bleep) from nobody, but I’m laid back. Rich, you see him every day and he’s so cool, so serious. He’s different on game day.
“You’ll be playing in a game and you’ll be like, `Damn, why are you doing that?’ He’s like, `(Bleep) it. He did something to me two years ago.’ I’m like, `Damn, you got a memory like an elephant.’’
Second-year defensive tackle Desmond Bryant doesn’t hesitate to approach Seymour with a question _ provided Seymour doesn’t come to him first. Bryant said when a mistake of his is exposed by a coach on the video screen, Seymour, sitting behind him, will say, “That’s not OK. You’ve got to fix that.’ ‘’
Defensive line coach Mike Waufle was in his first tour of duty with the Raiders when Seymour was a college senior and interviewed him before the draft. He thought then, and he thinks now, that Seymour is better off at defensive tackle.
Seymour was moved up and down the line to create mismatches with New England. When the Raiders signed Warren Sapp to a free agent contract in 2004, coach Norv Turner even invoked Seymour’s name, saying the Raiders planned to use Sapp the same way the Patriots used Seymour.
Leaving Seymour inside, Waufle believes, has paid off in production now that he has become comfortable with his role.
“Really, for the first time in his career, he’s playing where he needed to play. And that’s being able to be in that A gap and that B gap, on and off the guard and on and off the center,’’ Waufle said. “He’s such a big, imposing figure that he can dominate a game from that position.
“He had to learn how to play it. It was new to him, a lot of the schemes. It took some time and development. It’s kind of funny because you think, well, that’s the veteran, but those schemes happen so much faster inside and they’re different. A lot of the combinations are different than they are on the outside, so it took a little time for him to develop.”
