Golden Tate is nothing if not controversial. So it's appropriate, as he returns to Seattle with the Detroit Lions on Monday, that he is once again stirring the pot. (And we're not talking about Top Pot.)
So far this season, he has accused the Minnesota Vikings of taking cheap shots on Detroit quarterback Matthew Stafford and accused his own offense of being too predictable. It's just the latest in a litany of controversies -- both on the field and off -- during his career.
He has tried to smooth over the comments about the 0-3 Lions' offense, saying he was not throwing any "subtle punches at anyone." (Leave the punching to Percy Harvin, right?)
"I think we have a great offense, and this is the same offense that the Saints won a Super Bowl with, with (offensive coordinator) Joe Lombardi there, so it definitely works," Tate told the Detroit Free Press after his earlier comments about opposing defenders telling him they knew what the Lions were running.
"I think we all just need to be accountable," he said. "To get this problem fixed, we all need to be accountable. Coaches, players, scouting department, the people in the cafeteria making the food, our media, our fans. We all just need to be a little bit better, and I have no doubt, the personnel that we have, we will get on track."
The Lions will try to do that Monday in Seattle as Tate returns to face the team that drafted him in the second round in 2010 and turned him into the receiver he is today.
Tate took a couple of years to develop as a receiver; but, by his third season, he had become a solid contributor. In Seattle's run-first offense, he caught 45 passes for 688 yards and seven scores in 2012 and followed that with 64 catches for 898 yards and five touchdowns in 2013. He was also a good punt returner in 2013 and willing blocker -- a good all-around player for the Seahawks.
But the Hawks chose not to pay him last year. They had Harvin, who was making $12 million a year, and Tate ended up signing a five-year, $31 million deal with the Lions. He then proceeded to step in as their top receiver, with Calvin Johnson injured for much of the season, and set career bests with 99 receptions for 1,331 yards. He led the NFL in yards after the catch.
Stafford this week called him “just a guy with great catch-and-run ability, a guy that makes something out of nothing quite a few times. He did it last week, had a big play for us on a play that looked to be a negative play. At the same time, just an energy guy, plays hard on Sundays and last year was forced into a No. 1 role for us when we lost Calvin for about half the year. He did a great job in that regard as well.”
Pete Carroll said, Tate "was an all-around athlete. He was so natural at catching and making moves and playing the game. It came easy to him in that regard. He had to grow through some of that (in 2010 and 2011) because he was such a natural athlete. He had to work hard at his stuff, which he did. The punt return stuff was pretty fun to watch once we got him back there (in 2013). He’s a good player.”
But he wasn't good enough that Seattle wanted to pay him. And that made him mad. He obviously wanted to stay in Seattle, but he said the Hawks offered him 40 percent less than Detroit did and it would have taken him two years in Seattle to make what Detroit paid him in 2014 ($9.5 million).
Many fans are upset that the Seahawks chose Harvin over Tate, especially after Harvin was traded last October. It came to light last year that Harvin had scuffled with Tate in the locker room just before the Super Bowl.
But the Hawks could have kept Tate if they wanted to. They just didn’t want to offer him $5 million per year. They likely were offering closer to what they paid Doug Baldwin -- $4.3 million per year, with $6.2 million paid in the first year and $9 million in the first two.
“There’s always difficult decisions," Carroll said this week. "We tried to keep him, and we just couldn’t get there, where he wanted to go. He was a good guy on our team; we liked the heck out of him. He was one of my favorite guys out there. We tried, but we couldn’t get it done. That’s all it was; it had nothing to do with anybody else.”
Just before the Seahawks played the Packers in the NFC Championship Game, Tate wrote what amounted to an open letter to Seattle to address everything that bugged him about the way his time in Seattle ended and the things dumb fans said about him.
Now he is returning to face his former team and fans -- on a Monday night. He has had big, controversial moments on Monday nights before. In 2012, he caught the so-called Fail Mary to beat the Packers. And in 2013, he scored on an 80-yard touchdown to help beat the Rams, but he immaturely taunted the pursuing defender halfway to the end zone and was penalized for it.
Much to the Seattle media's disappointment, he was not made available for the conference call this week to discuss his time in Seattle and his return. But you know if he had been he would have said something controversial.
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