By RAY BENTON
Leader sports editor
Clinton McDonald retreated at birth, but that’s the last time he seemed reluctant to face a challenge.
Adversity is where he has thrived in his professional career as an NFL defensive lineman, and it culminated last Sunday with a Super Bowl championship. McDonald, a former Jacksonville Red Devil, was the starting nose tackle for the Seattle Seahawks in their 43-8 destruction of the Denver Broncos in Super Bowl XLVIII in East Rutherford, N.J. But he wasn’t always as willing to face challenges head on. There was a time very early in life when retreat seemed the best option.
THE CUT
“Clinton’s birth was so unusual,” said Bonnie McDonald, the mother of the 287-pound Seattle Seahawk. “He would try to go back. Almost like he didn’t want to be born.”
Since then, there’s been no backing down. The most recent opportunity for folding the tent and calling in the dogs was when he was cut from the Seahawks shortly after the final preseason game in August. It had been his best game of what he thought was an outstanding preseason. He was stunned.
“To be honest with you, it was weird being cut,” said McDonald. “Honestly, it was very weird. I kind of knew something was up. When they cut Michael Watson, an All-Pro fullback, it kind of gave me a shaky feeling. I felt like nothing’s for sure. I was sitting there with my friend Red Bryant (Seattle’s defensive end) when I got the call. I drove up there, we talked about it and they decided to release me.”
McDonald’s primary concern wasn’t that he’d never play football again. He knew there were 31 other teams. Losing relationships that he’d developed over the previous three years was the most difficult aspect.
“The feeling wasn’t that I wasn’t ever going to play football again,” McDonald said. “It was that I’m connected with a group of guys that I call brothers, and really feel that way about. Losing that fellowship with good men, it hurt. It cut me deep.”
Still, the news was a major setback, and McDonald was determined to battle through it. He came home to Jacksonville and asked his old basketball coach Jerry Wilson, who is now the athletic director, if he could begin daily workouts at the high school. Wilson opened the fieldhouse and gates to the football stadium so McDonald could begin training for his next shot at an NFL roster.
But soon something changed about his approach to what had happened. Suddenly, this was no setback, and training became a joy instead of a stressful attempt to win back his job.
“God got me to step back and take a look and say, what are you going to do with your new opportunity,” McDonald said. “When he showed me that, I felt relaxed. I wasn’t worried about it anymore. I just felt like I was blessed to have a name that was in the NFL, and what I could do to glorify God because of that.
“I came home and started working out at Jan Crow Stadium. That’s where I started, so I said if I have to start over, this is where it’s going to be. This is where the true grind was provided at the very beginning, so I wanted to get out there and run those same bleachers in that 100-degree weather again, and chisel myself back to the player I used to be.”
McDonald was recruited from Jacksonville High School as a 240-pound linebacker. He was moved to the line not long after his first season began at the University of Memphis. He played his whole college career as an undersized lineman, but he was always the strongest player on the team. Remembering that, he went to work.
“I know the physicality of the NFL,” McDonald said. “Everyone says to play my position you have to be 300 pounds. But I was doing everything a 300 pounder would do in college. So why do I have to put on weight? So I got myself into what I felt like was my best shape. Even though I was already considered small, I decided to lose weight and play where I felt best.”
McDonald was still in Jacksonville when his teammates took to the field for the first game of the regular season, but he continued to work. He worked out for the New England Patriots, who seemed ready to sign him. Then on the Thursday before the Seahawks’ second game, he got a call from general manager John Schneider.
“He asked me if they needed me to play today, could I play,” McDonald said. “I told him I’ve been working since the day I was cut, and I was ready to go.”
THE GAME
Most of the rest of the story took place on national television each week. McDonald returned to Seattle a smaller but better player. He had his best season as a pro, recording 42 tackles and 5.5 sacks. He matched his career high of five tackles in a game in the Super Bowl and added a quarterback knockdown, a forced fumble and a recovered fumble, although the forced fumble isn’t officially recognized in the statistics.
Replays clearly show McDonald making the hit that caused Denver’s Knowshon Moreno to lose the ball that was picked up by offensive lineman Chris Clark. The fact that he didn’t get credit for it doesn’t bother McDonald.
“We have a saying from all the way back in high school about the game film,” McDonald said. “The eye in the sky don’t lie. The people it really matters to, my teammates and coaches, they know how it happened. And that’s the way it is for everybody. Stats are missed sometimes, but we know.”
Even though the game itself was one of the worst blowouts in Super Bowl history, McDonald said it wasn’t easy.
“It looked easy on TV, but it’s never easy,” McDonald said. “It’s hard to get a first down in the NFL, much less a win, and much less a Super Bowl win. I think the preparation took care of a lot of things. We prepared for Peyton Manning,” Denver’s legendary quarterback, “like crazy. This is a guy who has broken practically every record in the NFL this season. We felt like this is the time, the perfect opportunity to display what kind of defensive unit we really are. We prepared like crazy.”
Players arrived in New York for Super Bowl week the Sunday before the big game. After a couple of days enjoying the atmosphere and taking part in events planned for players, the Seahawks’ defense blocked it out.
“About Wednesday, guys took it upon themselves to shut it down as far as all the fun stuff and all the distractions,” McDonald said.
Speaking of distractions, McDonald said that Richard Sherman’s nationally televised outburst at the end of the Seahawks’ win over archrival San Francisco was never a distraction for the team, even though it remained in the Super Bowl discussion every day leading up to the game.
“The Sherman deal was never a big deal to us because we knew where Sherman’s heart was,” McDonald said. “He’s a passionate guy. Whatever he and (49ers receiver Michael) Crabtree had going before the game, Sherman was just determined he wasn’t going to bring it into his house that day.”
FAMILY
McDonald is the second son and third child of Larry and Bonnie McDonald. He developed a rivalry with older brother Cleyton, now an Arkansas State Police trooper, at a very early age. As a ninth-grader, Clinton watched Cleyton, then a junior, suffer a knee injury during football season that usually takes at least nine months to a year to rehabilitate. Cleyton was back working out with the football team that spring. At the time, team trainer Jason Cates said he’d never seen anyone work as hard as Cleyton did in rehab, and called the speed of his return miraculous.
That’s what Clinton was up against growing up, and he hasn’t lost sight of the fact that it’s helped him become strong-willed enough to make it despite his lack of size.
McDonald’s sister Cleyardis lives in South Carolina. Brother Caleb is in the Air Force and stationed in Kuwait. They weren’t able to make the trip to the Meadowlands, but mom, dad, Cleyton, and younger brother Courtland did make it. Someone else was there, too. Alicia Jackson was officially invited into the McDonald family on Nov. 24, Seattle’s bye week this past season, and will become a McDonald when they marry on March 30.
“I’ve known Alicia since we were about three years old at church,” McDonald said.
Jackson is a graduate of Parkview High School in Little Rock and a nurse at St. Vincent’s Hospital.
FAITH
While Larry was the hard-working provider, Bonnie served as the family anchor, and the Bible was the key tool for the family’s foundation. Clinton took to the teachings early, and still today always has Holy Scripture on the edge of his lips.
Bonnie even turned her oldest boys’ intense rivalry into an act of service to God.
“I gave them the scripture from the Book of Proverbs, ‘as iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another,’” Bonnie McDonald said. “I didn’t want them competing just to beat each other. I always wanted them to know that they could use that competition to help each other become stronger.”
McDonald now hosts an annual youth football camp in Jacksonville, and aptly calls it the Iron Sharpens Iron Youth Football Camp.
McDonald is also a part of a group of about eight Seahawks who meet regularly for Bible study. He reads the Bible and prays every morning, and had an epiphany during that time on the morning of the Super Bowl.
“I opened my Bible in my hotel room that morning,” McDonald said. “And you know we read about King David, and Joseph and Solomon, and it just amazes me that God has blessed me, and not with being in the NFL or playing in the Super Bowl. God has blessed me by writing my name in the Lamb’s Book of Life. To be honest with you, the Super Bowl win feels good. But having that responsibility of being a child of God, that’s heavier to me than wearing that ring....We, as children of God, we have to go out there and fight the good fight. He gave us mercy and grace through his Son Jesus Christ who died on a cross because we have sinned. We don’t even see how unworthy we are. And for Him to give it freely, we’re being selfish if we’re not living for him and giving it all back to him. So I trust Jesus, and I try to stay grounded and lean back on the Lord.”
