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This week’s Football Diner Guest Columnist, Colin Ward, remembers Seattle Seahawk DE Jacob Green. If you woud like to feature here, break out your quills and send us your articles via our “Have Your Say” form. Every week we will publish the best reader’s articles in our Features Section.
 
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The Scourge of New York: Jacob Green
by Colin Ward
1/10/2007
 
For a lot of New York Giant fans, if you mention the team of the Seattle Seahawks they’ll think of one particularly heart breaking memory – or rather three particularly heart breaking memories…place kicker Jay Feely’s tragic trio of misses during the classic 2005 week 12 clash inside the noisy cauldron of partisan sound that is Qwest Field.
 
If you mention Seattle to this particular Giants fan though he doesn’t think of left tackle Luke Petitgout’s false starts in that infamous game or tight end Jeremy Shockey’s premature celebrations on the sidelines. He doesn’t think of anyone on the Giants roster or even the Seahawks roster. He thinks of a man who he first saw play some twenty odd years ago, a man who is undoubtedly one of the most underrated defensive ends of all time, former Seattle Legend, number 79, LDE Jacob Green…
 
Week 7, 1986. The New York Giants marauded their way into Washington state on their path of glory and into the noisy confines of the old Seattle Kingdome to claim another helpless victim in the Seahawks.
 
The Giants had massive momentum behind them with a five game winning steak and a crushing 35-3 victory over Buddy Ryan’s Philadelphia Eagles the week before that featured Lawrence Taylor at his League MVP calibre best with four back breaking sacks on Philly’s shell-shocked passers.
 
Seattle on the other hand limped into the game on the back of a devastating 14-10 divisional loss to the Los Angeles Raiders. Jim Plunkett started in place of the injured Marc Wilson to throw two touchdown passes for LA and categorically shoot down the struggling Seahawks.
 
The domineering, bully-boy Giants led by a plethora of Pro Bowlers and future Hall of Famer’s looked mean, hungry and primed to take their AFC West opponents to the proverbial wood-shed for a New Jersey style beating…
 
But it never happened…
 
Big Blue went home black and blue, licking their deep and considerable wounds. The Seattle Seahawks won a demolition derby, car wreck of a game – physical and battering beyond comprehension by the score of 17-12. Seattle took it to the Giants and beat them at their own game. At the eye of the storm, leading the way was one Jacob Green.
 
Green produced a definitive and breathtaking masterclass in flawless defensive end play, ruthlessly destroying the Giants offensive line for FOUR sacks, still a Seattle single game record to this very day.
 
Green didn’t give New York’s Phil Simms even a moments worth of peace. The quarterback was harrassed, victimised and stomped on all day long by the relentless number 79. Sacked seven times in all by a motivated Seahawk front seven ( Paul Moyer, linebacker Fredd Young and nose tackle Joe Nash had the other three sacks ) it must’ve been the longest and most physically painful day of Simms’ long, successful and distinguished career.
 
Modestly after the game Green heaped praise on his team mates despite his one man show of excellence. “I had help,” said the 6-3, 257-pound Green. “It’s not just a one-man game. Other guys put the pressure on Simms. We had been called “Sad Sacks’ and “Sack Ladies,” Green said. “That bothered us.”
 
It appears that bothering Jacob Green was the last thing you’d want to do!
 
For many of those Giants players of that Super Bowl XXI winning 1986 squad, the sight of Green rampaging over, through and around desperate blockers to crunch their passer must’ve forced them to cast their minds back three years earlier to painful recollections of the week 15 1983 home game at Giants stadium that brought them face to face with Seattle again…and that man Jacob Green. At the end of his career, Green admitted that the ’83 encounter was one of his fondest memories as a player.
 
The Giants appeared to have won the game with a late touchdown pass, but referee Jerry Markbreit called a holding penalty on a New York player who had illegally pulled Green down.
 
While New York celebrated what seemed to be a rare victory in Bill Parcells’ first season as Head Coach, Green knew better. He’d earned his team a key win ( strangely by the same score of 17-12 that would decide the ’86 game ) through his guile and skill on that play to win a deserved and favourable penalty call – possibly the pivotal play of the entire 1983 season and one that would eventually help scrape Seattle into the playoffs at 9-7. After brilliant wins over Denver and Miami, Seattle forged a path into the AFC Championship game where they would sadly fall to the eventual Super Bowl winning Los Angeles Raiders.
 
Green was the team’s first-round draft pick in 1980 out of Texas A&M.; He was the 10th player taken overall in that year’s draft. He formed for most of his career a group with defensive-line trio of Joe Nash, Jeff Bryant that was called ” The Die Hards ” – very apt as the three men played for almost a full decade together.
 
Although Green spent most of his career in the 3-4 formation, Seattle did experiment with the 4-3 in the late 80’s. Green showed incredible durability and versatility by being equally adept in either formation – both as an expert run-stuffer or formidible pass rusher.
 
Green’s name can be found scattered all over the Seahawks record book and include, amongst many others;
 

Green was also selected to two Pro Bowls – in 1986 and 1987, as well as being named an alternate in other All Star games. In an era that saw Green competing for Pro Bowl places with the likes of Rulon Jones, Howie Long, Mark Gastineau, Bruce Smith and Leslie O’Neal, Green deserved to have had many more trips to Hawaii but even in his pomp, stuck on an unfashionable Seattle team he was underrated despite the huge volume of tackles, sacks and forced fumbles he weighed in with consistently each and every year. If Green had played his career in a “fashionable” city there is no doubt he would’ve had a good half dozen, if not more Pro Bowl berths on his resume.
 
Please let us honour this extremely deserving player – The Scourge of New York I’d like to christen him – a great man who ended his career with more offical sacks than anyone in NFL history save Lawrence Taylor and Reggie White…