Living Legends: Where are they now?
Shaun Alexander’s life looks much different today than his playing days, and that’s the way he prefers.
The former All-SEC tailback at Alabama, and NFL standout, doesn’t often revisit his playing days five years into retirement. He’s moved on to the “next thing,” as he often refers.
Alexander’s life since football has been all about timing — doing the right things at the right moments, as he defines the word. The former Seattle Seahawk and Washington Redskin had to accept he’d played his last down in the NFL at age 31. For the past five years, he’s intentionally avoided the public eye.
Alexander is quick to say that life after football has been deliberate, that he has no regrets. Alexander told the Seattle Times in January that he — the first running back to take the Seahawks to a Super Bowl — would watch and cheer on “our team,” as he still refers to the Seahawks, with no regrets.
Many have questioned how a former NFL MVP and single-season touchdown record-holder could leave the spotlight so quickly.
After playing one season in Washington, Alexander and his family settled in the small suburban D.C. town of Great Falls, Va.
During the days, his home turns into a classroom. He and his wife, Valerie, decided to homeschool their children when they realized Alexander’s days with the Seahawks were coming to an end. Rather than constantly pulling their kids out of school if Alexander bounced around teams, they decided to homeschool, not realizing his career would soon be over.
Alexander describes his life now as stable. Looking at where he is now makes him more comfortable with looking at what the “next thing” might be.
“It’s been five years now and what I feel is, the house is stable,” Alexander said in a January interview with the Seattle Times. “I think the family is healthy, our marriage is healthy and I think our finances our fine. I think, usually, if you can have a healthy mindset of who you are and what you stand for … then it makes sense to move on to the next thing. If all those things aren’t healthy, you’ll be miserable, anyway.”
He’s passionate about helping players become healthy after their playing days. More than 75 percent of NFL players go broke within two years of retirement.
Alexander did want to be a part of that statistic, nor does he want currently players to raise that number.
Like most things in their life, he and his wife were deliberate when settling into Great Falls. Alexander didn’t want to make too big a splurge on a home, even when he could’ve done so financially after signing an eight-year, $62 million deal with Seattle in 2006.
Not all the money was guaranteed, and they wanted to be sure they could handle the expense long term, as Alexander tells Geoff Baker of the Seattle Times.
Alexander wants to get back into football, but not as a coach. He’s set up an exploratory meeting with an NFL team. Alexander envisions a front-office role, a role where he can guide players.
“A natural fit for me would be to my arms around some of the rookies and even some of the guys who are some of the elite players and make a little more money,” Alexander said. “I’d try to help them walk through all of it. Not only the league, but the fact that it’s almost over. I’d want to show them how you become healthy when you leave.”
His kids know little about his career. There is the rare videotape viewing. But Alexander likes to keep it that way. Now, he’s a father first and a teacher second.
“This is who I am,” Alexander said back in January to the Times. “This is what I want my life to be. And whatever else I may wind up doing, that’s not going to change.”