Michael Allan arrived at the Seahawks’ headquarters Tuesday

Published on May 19, 2010 by     

When Michael Allan arrived at the Seahawks’ headquarters Tuesday, he was expecting to catch a few passes from quarterback J.P. Losman – not catch on as a member of the team’s 90-player roster.

Allan, as it turned out, did both.

“I was just here to catch balls from J.P.,” Allan, a former wide receiver from Bellevue’s Interlake High School, said Wednesday after his first practice with the Seahawks. “Then they had me run a 40 (yard dash), and I guess I ran pretty fast.”

Yes he did. The 6-foot-6, 254-pound Allan was clocked in the 4.6-second range – which was faster than he ran at the NFL scouting combine in 2007 coming out of Whitworth.

So Allan was signed, as was Losman.

Even the tale of how Allan got the call to assist with Losman’s workout comes with a catch. He attends the same church as Will Lewis, the Seahawks’ vice president of football operations. Allan’s girlfriend introduced him to Lewis, who told Allan he might get a call if the team ever needed a pair of hands to assist with the evaluation of an arm.

“We kind of thought they’d put me on the reserve list in case somebody got hurt, because I was local,” Allan said. “Then they said, ‘We want to sign you.’

“It was kind of unexpected.”

Kind of? Allan was a seventh-round draft choice by the Kansas City Chiefs in 2007 – making him the first player from Whitworth to be drafted since Eric Kelly in 1972 (by the Detroit Lions). Allan spent most of that season on the Chiefs’ practice squad before being signed to the active roster in mid-December. The Chiefs released him in August 2008. He signed with the California Redwoods of the UFL in August 2009, but was released after one game.

Since then, Allan has been working as a personal trainer at Gold’s Gym in Issaquah and living with friends on the Sammamish plateau.

“I never thought of it so much as I wasn’t capable of playing, because I knew I was,” Allan said. “But part of me was thinking, ‘Well, I’m 26, I’m home now and I’ve got a job here and a life here. So if it doesn’t happen, it wouldn’t be the worst thing.’

“But then I started working out again, I was like, ‘OK, I want to do it. I’ve still got it.’ ”

He definitely had it Tuesday, which got him onto the practice field Wednesday. The line at tight end is long, and talented – headed by John Carlson, a second-round draft choice in 2008 who has 105 receptions in his first two seasons. It also includes veteran Chris Baker, who was signed in free agency; Cameron Morrah, a seventh-round draft choice last year; Anthony McCoy, a sixth-round draft choice this year; and Jameson Konz, a seventh-round pick this year.

But then Allan already beat some long odds by just getting a spot on the 90-man roster. He’ll worry about what happens next when the club must release a player each time it signs a draft choice and then trim the roster to 75 and 53 players this summer.

The unexpected events of this week are just the latest chapter in what has been quite a story for the one-time journalism major, as you can read in this story about Allan from the 2007 scouting combine.

“This is awesome,” Allan said. “I never dreamed these guys would call me, and I’d end up signing.”

Tags: California Redwoods, Detroit Lions, Draft Choice, Eric Kelly, Football Operations, Girlfriend, Interlake High School, J P Losman, Kansas City Chiefs, nfl combine, Nfl Scouting Combine, Pair Of Hands, Personal Trainer, Practice Squad, Sammamish Plateau, Ufl, Whitworth, Wide Receiver, Workout, Yard Dash