Kenny Easley had to wait longer than he should have to be enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, but in a way, it made that honor that much sweeter when he finally got that call in 2017, 30 years after his standout Seahawks career came to an end.
"I will never get this feeling out of my heart," Easley said when that year's Hall of Fame class addressed the media prior to that year’s Super Bowl. “… I'm enormously grateful for this opportunity. To be reconsidered after 30 years, I'm glad it happened now, because I feel that if it had happened in 1997, I wouldn't be as grateful as I am right now at age 58 for this to happen. So that means a great deal that it happened to me now.”
One of the best defensive players in team history, Easley was named to the 1980s All-Decade Team, and the Seahawks Ring of Honor, and had a kidney ailment not ended his career after just seven seasons, he surely would have been enshrined in the Hall of Fame decades earlier. Over seven seasons, Easley piled up 32 interceptions, three of which he returned for touchdowns, and he earned the nickname "The Enforcer” with his hard-hitting play.
Easley was a five-time Pro-Bowler and three-time first-team AP All-Pro during his seven seasons in Seattle, and in 1984 he became the first player in franchise history to earn Defensive Player of the Year honors when he recorded 10 interceptions, two of which he returned for scores, helping the Seahawks record 63 takeaways, a mark that still stands as a post-merger NFL record. Easley was also named Team MVP during that 1984 season in which the Seahawks won 12 games for the first time in franchise history and in 1987 he was named a team captain.
“I remember doing a piece on Kenny Easley one time, and they just talked about that fear factor, like the hair on your neck would stand up because you knew he was there, and you knew he had bad intentions,” said former News Tribune Seahawks beat reporter Mike Sando, who is now an NFL senior writer for The Athletic. “There may not be a more intense player in the history of the Seahawks than Kenny Easley.”
Easley had to wait to receive his rightful place among Seahawks and NFL immortality, a process that tested him in his post playing days. After that kidney disease cut short his career, he brought a lawsuit against the team that was settled in the 1990s, and he spent 15 years avoiding the Seahawks and football all together, “wallowing in my own anger,” as he explained it in 2017.
A change in ownership, with Paul Allen taking over the team in 1997, led to a mending of fences, and allowed the Seahawks to properly honor one of their all-time greats while Easley was able to find some peace in his post-playing life.
"When I left the game, I was in a bad place mentally because of how my career ended," Easley said prior to having his number retired. "It took 15 years for me to even—I didn't watch a football game, not even college, I just felt like I had to get it completely out of my system. Then I got the call from Gary Wright in 2002 that the Seahawks wanted to do this. Fifteen years was long enough. My kids were getting to an age where they could realize what their father had done, and I thought that it was the right time. Talking to various people who were close to me, they all agreed that, 'You can't sit there and hold anger against an organization that in 2002 had nothing to do with what happened to you in 1987.' So it was the right time to do it, and I'm glad I did it. The Seahawks organization under Paul Allen and John Schneider and Peter McLoughlin has been absolutely fantastic to Kenny Easley, so I have nothing but good things to say about them."
