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Game Day: ...the '84 team landed seven players in the Pro Bowl Continue reading
Statistics: Season Summaries and amazing honors
What We've Overheard: "He can make plays like nobody can." -- Seattle coach Chuck Knox
What You Say: "Kenny Easley was the best Free-Safety that I've ever seen! He was a magnificient blend of aggression & finesse!"
Ring of Honor:
"From the time Kenny came into the league, he was one of the top one or two safeties in the league. He came in with a splash, and he brought the whole package." -- Nolan Cromwell
The Way it Was:
KENNY Easley, the finest defensive player to wear a Seattle Seahawks uniform, has faced more adversity than his 31 years deserve. If his kidney had not betrayed him, he'd surely still be the Pro Bowl safety he so often was.
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 The Way It Was Source: Inside the Seahawks, Volume 1, Number 17, November 28, 1986 - December 4, 1986 In all probability after talking with doctors... (Kenny Easley is out) for the season. Give the ankle a chance to mend, a chance for him to rehab. (The decision) came down to really our sitting down and discussing the fact of how difficut it is mentally not to be able to practice and then to play. (The ankle) is all right early in the game and then it starts to hurt. Enough is enough. -- Coach Chuck Knox
Source: The Seattle Times KENNY Easley, the finest defensive player to wear a Seattle Seahawks uniform, has faced more adversity than his 31 years deserve. If his kidney had not betrayed him, he'd surely still be the Pro Bowl safety he so often was. Kidney disease cut short Easley's brilliant National Football League career two years ago. There'll be no football comeback. There will be a more important one - battling back from kidney deterioration after a weekend transplant. Unresolved are the merits of a lawsuit filed against the Seahawks by Easley, now co-partner of a sports-management group. He alleges his kidney trouble was caused or aggravated by large doses of the pain reliever ibuprofen. When word of the last week's transplant got out, many who remembered how much Easley gave to football wanted to help. Typically, he didn't want anything for himself. Instead, he suggested donations to the Northwest Kidney Foundation or to Friends of Youth. One of the sorriest chapters of local sports is how Easley and Seattle fell out of love with each other. Fans who had cheered his all-out style of play turned on him with boos for accepting the tough job as player representative for his union during the unpopular NFL strike of 1987. He was a miscast villain. Taking on the tough job was his style. It still is. In this comeback battle, Easley deserves the community's full support.
Source: Sports Illustrated In a matter of months, Kenny Easley went from being the Seahawks' biggest star to being cast off in a trade to being out of football forever and fighting for his life. He later underwent a transplant for a degenerative kidney allegedly caused by pain-relief medication from his playing days. A lawsuit against the Seahawks was settled out of court and perpetuated his alienation from the team to this day. Start to finish, it might be one of the saddest stories in Seattle sports. In a seven-year career, Easley picked off 32 passes, including 10 in 1984 to earn NFL Defensive Player of the Year honors. That went up next to his 1981 award as the AFC Defensive Rookie of the Year and his 1983 award for AFC Defensive Player of the Year. His production tailed off, and after the 1987 season, Seattle tried to cash in on the five-time Pro Bowler by sending him to Phoenix for 23-year-old holdout quarterback Kelly Stouffer. But Easley failed his physical when tests showed kidney damage already in alarming stage. The Seahawks ended up trading a slew of picks for Stouffer and Easley was left to retire in the uniform of a team he knew had tried to get rid of him -- not to mention the embarrassment of having another team's doctors find the cause of his ill-health instead of the team for which he had been risking his life. Stouffer, by the way, was a bust for the Seahawks, throwing seven TDs and 19 INTs in five years.
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