Fullback Michael Robinson was back in the Seahawks locker room Tuesday, nearly two months after being released by Seattle, he was thrilled to be back.
“Oh man, it feels awesome,” Robinson said. “You miss Sundays, you really do. I almost became one of you guys (media). I experimented a little bit. It’s great to be back in the building to get back to work.”
Robinson said he got a text from Seahawks GM John Schneider a day after starting fullback Derrick Coleman injured his hamstring in Arizona.
And if you think Robinson was going to hold a grudge against the team that cut him seven weeks earlier, Robinson has a message for you.
“If you think there’s loyalty in this game, that’s your fault,” he said. “It’s business, you’ve got to understand that. If you’d have asked me that question five or six years ago, there’d have been some personal… When I left San Francisco, I was upset. Very upset. I felt like I was done wrong, didn’t really understand the business side of it then. But now you just understand and move on from it.”
Robinson didn’t want to get released, mind you, but given his $2.5 million salary, as well as a serious illness that hit during the preseason, he wasn’t surprised.
“Well I’m a realist, so I understood that I had two preseason games, I knew they drafted a guy (Spencer Ware), they were high on Derrick, and I knew I needed to be on the field to keep my job,” Robinson said. “I knew what my salary was, I know the business of this game, and I knew there was a big chance that I would be let go. I was just hoping and praying for an opportunity to be able to come back and come to work.”
“Pete and John did a great job communicating with me. They were very up front when they cut me. They basically said, ‘Mike, we know there’s going to come a point down the line where you’re going to be healthy and we’re probably going to need you, and if the opportunity presents itself, we’re gong to come get you. You’re part of the family, you’re part of us, you helped us start this thing.’ It just felt really good that an organization feels that strongly about you.”
As for that illness, Robinson explained that he became sick after taking Indocin, a prescribed anti-inflammatory. He said he woke up the morning of the preseason game against Denver thinking he had the flu, but not long after he was in the hospital. Robinson was actually hospitalized twice, and spent a few days there the second time.
“It was bad, man,” he said. “I didn’t realize how bad it was until I was able to look back and reflect on it. We have great doctors at UW, liver specialists, kidney specialist, blood guy, they’ve been in constant contact with me, checking up on me making sure I’m OK. Even times when I didn’t always communicate back, they stayed on me and I’m grateful for those guys.
“I was taking as prescribed, but I think I was dehydrated before the game, and you can’t take those medicines and be dehydrated. Then I probably got sick at the same time — they said it was the perfect storm. I felt like I was just getting the flu, then came to find it was real bad. Liver and kidneys almost failed, it was pretty bad.”
Robinson is back up to 245 pounds, but got as light as 212, he said. Now he’s feeling good and says he’s ready to play Monday if called upon. And it sounds like Robinson could use an outlet for some pent-up aggression.
“My wife was telling me all the time I started getting real aggressive wrestling with the kids,” Robinson said. “She was like, “Go put on a helmet and run into some trees or something.” I definitely missed it, more than anything just being around the guys in this locker room. We’ve got a lot of great character guys in this locker room, and that’s what you miss more than anything.”
Asked about what he has seen watching the Seahawks from afar, Robinson said, “We’ve grown up, definitely, across the board. We’ve learned how to win on the road, we’ve learned how to take that excitement, that juice that we have here at C-Link, we’ve learned how to take that on the road and win some nice games on the road. We’ve learned how to make some big plays in the clutch and finish games. And obviously we can rush the passer now. That’s awesome. It was awesome to see.”
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