The Receiver Who Wasn't There

The offseason, especially during the heady days of free agency and the draft, is the time to drastically re-imagine our teams.

New faces come. Familiar faces leave. Hope vacillates somewhere in-between.

Sure, the list of re-upped players lengthens. Ray Lewis in Baltimore. Kurt Warner in Arizona. Kerry Collins in Tennessee. Jon Stinchcomb and Jonathan Vilma in New Orleans. Jeff Saturday and Kelvin Hayden in Indianapolis. Tony Richardson and Brandon Moore in New Jersey.

More often, however, teams start the subtle and not-so-subtle shifts which will shape the story of their 2009 season as distinct from 2008.

Take the Jets, for instance. On paper thus far their offseason has reflected the words of new coach Rex Ryan, namely a commitment to physical (even “violent” according to Bart Scott) football. Trading for corner Lito Sheppard and signing linebacker Scott and safety Jim Leonard places the focus on defense, especially defense as Ryan imagines it.

Ryan in his time at Baltimore ran a defense as fluid as it was vicious. In stark contrast to the rest of the league, Ryan taught his system tailored to his players then allowed them to run as they saw fit on the field. He imparted his vision, one that included his players, and made them see the field through his eyes.

Of course, having talent like Ed Reed and knowledge like Ray Lewis makes football that fluid possible. It remains to be seen whether the talk and the signings will add up to such visionary football at the Jets.

Will Ryan’s tenure shape up like his father Buddy’s in Philly (good but not great)? Or in Arizona (miserable)? Or will he write a different story?

Take the Lions. No team needed a roster purge more than Detroit. Not a single splashy move among Jim Schwartz’s myriad moves, but a bunch of short contracts on reliable veterans.

Exeunt Jon Kitna at quarterback, Leigh Bodden at corner, Dwight Smith at safety, Mike Furrey at receiver, Edwin Mulitalo at guard, and Dan Campbell at tight end.

Enter Bryant Johnson at receiver, Grady Jackson at defensive tackle, Maurice Morris at running back, and Anthony Henry and Phillip Buchanon at corner.

Do those names look interchangeable to you? Perhaps if you stare at stat columns for too long. But the most important part is the jerseys that the incoming players wore last year, namely not silver and Hononlulu blue.

Also, several of these new Lions inked short contracts of two or three years which will theoretically give Schwartz time to draft and groom better talent. In the meantime, he’s nabbed some players that have no vivid memories of 0-16.

Or take the Buccaneers and their big purge. Jeff Garcia, Derrick Brooks, and nearly everyone over thirty gone. Some young talent in Kellen Winslow and Derrick Ward. And a looming identity crisis for a franchise that lost nearly all its veteran leadership in a few short weeks.

So then what to make of the biggest free agency move thus far besides Albert Haynesworth to the Redskins? What to make of TJ Houshmandzadeh to the Seahawks?

If this is the time to let our imaginations run wild about new combinations as great players leave old teams and join new ones, why am I in the midst of a creative block about Houshmandzadeh packing up for the gray shores of Seattle?

Because it’s Cincinnati, somehow, magically, their best and most consistent receiver hits the free market still in his prime. TJ’s big and strong. He’s quick enough though not blazingly fast. He plucks every pass and secures it, rarely fumbling. He worked his own way into being an elite receiver, never catching fewer than 90 passes in the last three seasons, never fewer than 900 yards in the past five.

The newly released Terrell Owens might possess more natural talent, but Houshmandzadeh is the kind of receiver that never takes what talents he has, which are considerable, for granted. He’s the kind of player you don’t mind paying big – $40 million, $15 million guaranteed big – in his early 30s because of the respect that he has for his conditioning. Three or four great years on the contract and TJ is easily worth it.

But what do those potentially great years portend to look like? And what effect will this have on Seattle as a whole, a team struggling between the team that they were and the team that they think they are.

Houshmandzadeh’s game is all stealth. His routes are so crisp that the resulting production tends toward machine-like consistency. Working underneath and often inside, TJ chips away at defense often running to its heart and snagging pieces of it, little by little. By the end of game, the spectator turns around and without any spectacular dashes or circus catches realizes Houshmandzadeh just put together a helluva game.

There aren't any interesting pictures of Houshmandzadeh on Flickr. I usually scroll through Flickr to find a photo real, something funny, something taken by a fan, something without sticky copyright issues. For this post, I pulled a screen grab from an MTV Cribs episode. The only interesting photo of Houshmandzadeh on Flickr is also a screen grab, one I ran on here midseason, showing TJ cleaning the mud off his cleats with a Terrible Towel.

There’s no silly fan event photos. No weird banquent guest photos. No goofing around in training camp photos. No sideline emotion photos.

It’s as if outside of the dimensions of the football field, Houshmandzadeh ceases to exist.

And I’m not so sure on the field he doesn’t also take on similar ghost-like qualities. He just disappears. He just makes a defense pay. It’s not art as Larry Fitzgerald creates, one distinct moment from the next. It’s a body of work that builds up over time, piece by piece, a mosaic of sorts.

Obviously, a West Coast Offense like Seattle's thrives on receivers with TJ’s skill set. Yet it’s still difficult to gauge his impact.

What room have they sealed Matt Hasselbeck in? Will he ever return to form as the best quarterback no one ever thinks about? Does Jim Mora plan on turning Seneca Wallace into a little Michael Vick? How much cap room can the linebackers eat up before it sinks the team’s ability to rebuild its offensive and defensive lines?

These are not questions Houshmandzadeh is asked to answer. In some sense, he will just be free to be, to do his job in a more sane environment than Cincinnati and let the Seahawks’ chips fall where they may, perhaps much like the rest of the team that remains nearly invisible until the second round of the playoffs most years.