RENTON, Wash. (AP) -Koren Robinson is healthy and has his life in order for the first time in more than three years.
That’s good news for the injury depleted Seattle Seahawks, who are starting to reap the rewards of giving their former top draft pick a second chance.
“I’m feeling better with my body. It’s really starting to understand what I’m asking of it,” the wide receiver said with a contented smile after yet another practice with the first-team offense.
Seahawks coaches hoped after they signed Robinson off his couch in Raleigh, N.C., in mid-September he would eventually join Bobby Engram and Deion Branch as their three top receivers.
Halfway through Seattle’s flip-flopped season, Robinson is No. 1.
Engram missed almost the entire preseason and the first three games with a broken shoulder. He has just 15 catches in five games while lining up outside more than he did last season. While mainly in the inside slot in 2007, Engram set a team record with 94 catches.
e January following reconstructive knee surgery and a bruised heel – though the former Super Bowl MVP did return to practice on Friday and might play Sunday at Miami (4-4).
That has left Robinson as the unlikely top option in a flopping offense, three-plus years after Seattle released him because of his alcohol problems.
“I’m pleased with how he’s playing. So I guess it is a pleasant surprise, yeah,” said coach Mike Holmgren, Robinson’s longtime supporter who convinced team president Tim Ruskell to bring him back two months ago. “I even like more how he’s living his life these days, believe it or not.”
Seattle’s first-round draft choice in 2001 turned a short pass into a 90-yard touchdown on the first play of last weekend’s game against Philadelphia. The longest play from scrimmage in Seattle history was the only score in an otherwise miserable 26-7 loss to the Eagles that dropped the Seahawks to 2-6.
He stutter-stepped on his route then sprinted past three Eagles defenders while cutting across the field for his first touchdown with the Seahawks since November 2004.
“That was special,” Robinson said.
In April, he could barely walk, let alone cut. Robinson was unsigned after Green Bay released him in the offseason, and he injured his right knee while doing squat lifts working out at home in North Carolina. He had surgery on that knee at the end of 2006, when he was with the Packers.
“My body was like, ‘Nah!”’ he said of the weight-room mishap, which kept him from running through June and effectively cost him a chance to sign with another team before training camps began in July. “But I’m smarter now. It enlightened me.”
The Seahawks started looking at Robinson while facing an epidemic of injuries at wide receiver. After backup quarterback Seneca Wallace injured his calf warming up before the Week 2 game against San Francisco, Ruskell and his staff intensified their research on Robinson.
Team executives flew to North Carolina and were convinced Robinson was fully reformed from his alcohol problems that got him suspended from October 2006 to October 2007. So Seattle signed him to a one-year contract.
He missed two games trying to get into football shape, which he’s still doing by reporting at 8 a.m. each day for extra work with team trainers. He has 12 catches in the four games he’s played, and says he’s finally back to where he wants to be – physically and personally.
He said he has a “block” in his mind that prevents him from thinking about alcohol anymore and that he has been sober for 27 months. The father to two young boys now has a baby girl just a few weeks old.
“I feel like what you see on the field,” Robinson said with a wide smile. “I’m progressing. I keep getting better.”
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