Sam Darnold got on a yellow one. A waaaaay too small yellow one.
But it wasn’t as tiny as Drew Lock’s. Darnold’s backup quarterback on the Seattle Seahawks got on a metallic blue one with gold wheels. It was basically a tricycle, but somehow with two tires.
“Could’ve, should’ve, picked a bigger one,” the 6-foot-4, 28-year-old Lock said with a grin while aboard the semi-trike.
Grey Zabel got on a blue, Huffy “Rock It” model. If you call “on it,” the 6-foot-6 rookie guard sitting on the seat while he kicked his feet under the pedals to propel him down the road.
Dareke Young has, of course, been on a bike before. The Seahawks’ wide receiver is 26.
But it’s been more than a minute since he’d been on a little one with streamers in the spokes.
It’d apparently been never since he’s ridden a bike with a small, purple basket — and nothing else — attached on the front to the handlebar.
“No brakes?!” Young said to the little Green Bay girl, his voice with a hint of concern. Young drifted down a small hill. The bike’s owner walked next to him carrying his blue Seahawks helmet, smiling.
“Please pick me!” the kids kept pleading.
Some carried signs asking that.
Julian Love was the most discerning. And sweetest.
The 5-11 Pro Bowl safety surveyed the dozen of bikes bigger kids lined up outside the Seahawks’ locker room at Lambeau Field. All would have fit him better than the one the 27-year-old father of a young child chose. He picked the smallest bike from the smallest kid in the lineup, a little girl wearing a pink dress.
And, when Love picked her bike, the largest smile in Wisconsin.
The Seahawks didn’t just play along with one of the most endearing traditions in the NFL when they had their preseason joint practice with the Green Bay Packers on Thursday.
They immersed themselves into a 67-year-old Green Bay tradition that pre-dates Vince Lombardi’s arrival here: Local kids lining up to offer their bikes to players to ride from the stadium locker room the quarter mile or so to the practice fields, across the Lambeau parking lots and a wide city street.
The Seahawks made cool cooler.
“Incredible,” Darnold said of the Packers’ tradition, and getting to be a part of it for the first time. “Didn’t get a chance to raise the seat. That was a little tough.
“But we made it work. The kid that was holding my helmet walking next to me was incredible. He’s a joy to be around.”
Christian Haynes put a worried look on one boy’s face.
The 317-pound guard got on the kid’s red-and-black mountain bike — and flattened the back tire as he, kinda, sorta, rode.
This Green Bay tradition has been around at Lambeau with the Packers— and in rare cases such as preseason joint practices, their opponents — since 1958. No one now is quite sure how or why it got started.
But it’s endured, and endeared, through wars, 14 U.S. presidential administrations, recessions, Lombardi’s and Bart Starr’s Packers winning NFL titles, the Packers being terrible, then with Mike Holmgren, Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers, great again.
The Packers and the city of Green Bay call it the Dream Drive now.
It’s yet another homely aspect of the NFL’s smallest city (population: 106,000). It’s maybe better than the gameday parking in the private homes’ front yards surrounding the neighborhood stadium that’s $20 — $25 if you want to use the house’s bathroom. Or the pickup football games in yards, later in the regular season of mud and snow, between kids wearing Packers and opposing teams’ jerseys in games before the game.
As he “rode” his guy’s bike down the road with his feet walking the pavement under the pedals, Zabel started his conversation with a shy, star-struck boy in a neon-green Seahawks T-shirt and black cap.
“So, you’re from Green Bay?” Zabel, a native of Pierre, S.D., asked the boy as he walked beside carrying Zabel’s helmet down the road. “Solid.
“When’s school start up for ya’?”
Rookie linebacker Jared Ivey asked his silver mountain bike owner walking next to him wearing a throwback Kenneth Walker Seahawks jersey what his name was.
“Cameron,” the boy with sandy-blonde hair and a football for Ivey to autograph said.
“I’m Jared,” Ivey said. “Nice to meet you.”
Then he did a double take at the boy’s jersey.
“Are you from Green Bay?” Ivey said.
Cornerback Riq Woolen rode one of the taller mountain bikes, a metallic red one owned by one of the queue’s taller boys. The 6-4 Woolen chatted up the young man all the way down the road. Then he stopped for more autographs near the street, signing for kids in Packers and Seahawks gear alike.
Coach Mike Macdonald did not experience riding a Green Bay kid’s bike to the practice. He did experience the appreciation for his Seahawks players doing it.
“It was cool to see the guys come down the road here, getting ready for practice with all the kids on the bikes,” the 37-year-old new dad said.
“It’s been a great experience for us.
“And,” Macdonald said, getting back to the football, “I thought we had a great practice.”
Darnold has played in the NFL for seven seasons before this year. Last season he was with the hated, historic Packers division-rival Minnesota Vikings.
If he would have tried riding a Green Bay kid’s bike last year at this time, the locals would have run him off the road. Or the kid would have slashed his own tires.
Thursday, he was joking and laughing with Packer backers like he didn’t know what a Viking is.
He loved getting to do this as a Seahawk on a memorable, truly sunny Thursday in Wisconsin.
“All the kids with their bikes is so fun,” Darnold said.
“Such a great tradition, to be able to hang out with some of these kids that are the future of this game and, to be able to hang out with them and to put a smile on their face.”