Once destined for NFL stardom, confident Laviska Shenault seeks to show Seahawks who he is

Laviska Shenault doesn’t have a guaranteed spot on the Seahawks. Far from it.

He doesn’t have a complete season in any of the four he’s been in the NFL.

The wide receiver doesn’t have an extensive rapport with Geno Smith, Seattle’s starting quarterback. He doesn’t have familiarity with new coordinator Ryan Grubb’s offense. Or with new Seahawks head coach Mike Macdonald.

What the 25-year-old wide receiver, kick returner and former star at the University of Colorado does have, and a lot of...

Confidence.

Asked for his goals in this Seahawks training camp that is five practices in following drills in the rain Monday, Shenault told The News Tribune: “Oh, of course make the team; I wouldn’t even say that’s a goal.”

He chuckled.

“My goal is just to make the most of every opportunity,” Shenault said with a smile at the Seahawks’ Virginia Mason Athletic Center after one of his first training-camp practices with his new team, “and, really, just get back to a place that I want to be.”

That’s as one of the best in sport.

He was that in college. In 2018 as a sophomore at Colorado, he led major college football in receptions per game. At 6 feet 1 and 227 pounds, he bulled through defenders with the ball. Despite missing three games because of a knee injury he finished that 2018 college season with the third-most receptions for a season in Colorado history (86). He had 1,011 yards and six touchdowns receiving, plus five touchdowns rushing.

In 2019 he returned from the knee injury for his junior season. He broke four tackles on a fourth down late against Stanford to set up Colorado’s winning field goal. He had nine catches for 172 yards and a touchdown in CU’s 35-31 loss to heavily favored USC. He finished his junior season with 56 catches, 764 yards and four touchdowns receiving, with two more scores rushing.

He decided to leave CU before his senior year to enter the 2020 NFL draft.

“Colorado was different. I call Colorado, ‘My system.’ I did everything,” he said.

He cackled.

“Nah, shout out to my OC (in college), though,” he said of Darrin Chiaverini and, in his final college season, Jay Johnson.

Rocky NFL road so far

When the Jacksonville Jaguars drafted him 42nd overall in the second round four years ago, Shenault looked like a potential NFL star.

He had 79 and 100 targets with 58 and 63 catches his first two pro seasons with the Jaguars. He had five touchdowns as a rookie, but none his second season.

He wasn’t happy in year two in Jacksonville. Few were. That was the disastrous year of Urban Meyer’s only season as the Jaguars coach. The team fired him after its 2-11 start to that 2021 season.

Doug Pederson, the Bellingham native and Super Bowl-champion head coach for the Philadelphia Eagles, took over the Jaguars before the 2022 season. At the end of that preseason, in late August, Jacksonville traded Shenault to the Carolina Panthers. The Panthers general manager who made that trade was Scott Fitterer, the former longtime Seahawks top personnel executive and top deputy to Seattle GM John Schneider.

Shenault’s two seasons with Carolina were disasters.

A late arrival to the 2022 Panthers, he played 26% of the team’s offensive snaps. He had 27 catches on 32 targets, with a touchdown. A high-ankle sprain last season limited him to eight games and 10 receptions while also serving as Carolina’s kickoff returner. The Panthers let him leave as a free agent following that season in which they went 2-15 and fired coach Frank Reich.

“I will say my last year in Jacksonville and my two years in Charlotte, (it was me) just not getting the opportunity,” Shenault said. “And I can say I played a part in a little bit of that.

“Like I say, a lot of things happen that you can’t control. And I let it get to me. I let it get to me.”

Looking back, he doesn’t like how the Panthers and he handled his high-ankle sprain.

“They ... people know how this works. They rushed me back,” Shenault said. “But they wanted me to play. They were showing that they wanted me to play. But it ain’t like I was getting so many reps on offense. I was more a special-teams guy than anything.

“You know, it’s good. They are good people over there. I have a lot of respect for them.”

He missed three games from October into November 2023 with the original injury. He returned, then after playing in two games, went on injured reserve for the rest of the season. He played in five of 17 games.

“I should have just gone on injured reserve ... then come back fully healthy,” he says now. “I feel like I came back and I wasn’t healthy. I played like a game and a half and I got hurt in the second game back (Nov. 26 at Tennessee).

“I should have absolutely just waited it out.”

Shenault said he is 100% healed and a full go from the ligament damage in his ankle.

Laviska Shenault’s potential fit

New offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb could keep as many as seven wide receivers in a crowded competition during this Seahawks training camp. DK Metcalf, Tyler Lockett, Jaxon Smith-Njigba and Jake Bobo are locks. Fifth-year NFL veteran Cody White has impressed Lockett and coaches. Dareke Young, a Seahawks draft pick last year, is 6-2, 225 and played some tight end last year for the team.

Easop Winston Jr. has been with the team the last two seasons. Dee Eskridge has been injured and in off-the-field trouble since Seattle drafted him in the second round in 2021. This camp might be his last chance with the Seahawks.

That’s eight receivers besides Shenault, who has been on the reserve offense catching passes from backup quarterbacks Sam Howell and P.J. Walker so far.

So Shenault’s best chance to make the team is likely as the kickoff returner in the NFL’s unknown, new kickoff world.

Each day, Shenault is fielding Jason Myers’ attempts at figuring out the NFL’s new kickoff rule. Shenault, cornerback Tre Brown, Eskridge Winston plus undrafted rookie receiver Dee Williams have been fielding kickoffs.

Shenault’s size makes him an intriguing option as kickoff returner for Seattle. He’s the biggest of those practicing kick returns in camp. The new rules have the receiving teams and kicking teams closer together and in the receiving team’s end of the field. The kicker must place the kick between the 20-yard line and the goal line to force a return. The return team is limited in the number of blockers it can have to either side of the field to block after the returner fields the ball.

The thought is this year’s NFL kickoff returners might be bigger and more like, if not actual, running backs — bigger, one-cut-and-go guys who can break tackles.

Shenault has proven he can do that in the league. Even in his down year of 2022 with Carolina, he averaged a whopping 12.2 yards after the catch.

The Seahawks and new special-teams coach Jay Harbaugh are in the process of figuring out which type of kickoff returner to employ, a smaller speed guy like traditional returners, or the bigger, Shenault-like tackle-breaker. It depends on how Seattle decides to scheme its blocking on kickoff returns.

That won’t become clear until the coaches see the results during preseason games. Those begin for the Seahawks Aug. 10 at the Los Angeles Chargers.

“I would say there’s probably more unknown about the return teams (than kickoff teams under the new rules), just because there’s a little bit of a question of exactly who’s going to be able to get to who from a blocking perspective,” Harbaugh said. “With the horizontal constraints that you have, how far will one individual player be able to get to and execute a block?”

Laviska Shenault’s NFL roots

Shenault attended and played for DeSoto High School, the same school Seahawks rookie first-round pick Byron Murphy attended in the southern suburbs in Dallas.

Last season, Shenault was one of a remarkable seven graduates of Texas Class 6A DeSoto High (recent enrollment 2,216) playing in the NFL. The others include three-time All-Pro pass rusher Von Miller (Buffalo Bills), former Philadelphia Eagles Super Bowl-champion cornerback Jalen Mills (New York Giants) and Shenault’s DeSoto teammate James Proche. Proche was a defensive back last year for the Cleveland Browns who is now with the Minnesota Vikings.

“We call our school ‘DeSoto U.,’” Shenault said. “Literally, it’s a high school that’s a university.

“And why? It’s not to be cocky or anything. We just do things that other schools don’t.

“’Rain, sleet or snow, the Eagles are still on the go.’ That was our saying. It’s just that we approached the game of football at DeSoto. And just, dominate.”

Shenault isn’t doing that yet for the Seahawks. He’s under the radar at this training camp. His true chances won’t come until the preseason games begin and Shenault gets his chance with the ball in his hands to run over would-be tacklers like he did in his heyday at Colorado five years ago.

The three preseason games will be the opportunity to surprise some people, and remind NFL folks who he is.

“Most definitely,” he said. “Most definitely.

“And I feel like, it is what is. But, there’s time, still.

“There’s time, still.”