Locker's NFL rookie season ends

Jake Locker from Ferndale, Wash., played in three regular season NFL games during his rookie season with the Tennessee Titans as their No. 1 draft selection. As back-up to Matt Hasselbeck, Locker completed 51.5 percent of his passes, threw for four touchdowns and ran for one, and had a QB rating of 99.4.

His parents, Anita and Scott, traveled to Nashville for several games, including the Titans' first home games of the regular season, after watching him play in his first preseason game. But they did not make it to Cleveland when he played for the first time in regular season. "First time in his life," Scott Locker said after missing a preseason game, "that I haven't been at his game....felt really odd."

Scott Locker, as Jake's first coach, ranks high among the many coaches who have influenced Jake's career path. And if he'd followed in his father's initial direction, building on a family history, Jake Locker would have been an RB instead of a QB.

Our September 2011 cover story recounts the evolution of Locker as a quarterback who grew from a skinny 9th-grade DB/QB into a strapping NFL prototype and the Titans' first-round selection with the 8th pick in the 2011 draft.

He submitted to an interview last summer at his parents' home in Ferndale, Wash., while signing Topps trading cards at the dining room table during the NFL lockout. His recent (July 3) bride, Lauren, worked on a computer in the living room; a Topps rep managed the stacks of cards to sign; a reporter chatted up Locker during the process, and "Ten" hung out nearby.

During a later interview, one of more than 20 for this story, a member of the Titans' coaching staff shared a tale involving "Ten," the Lockers' beloved chocolate Lab. Dowell Loggains, the quarterbacks coach and coordinator of Tennessee's passing game, gave his version of a visit to the University of Washington for private workouts and a brunch get-together with Locker in Seattle leading up to the NFL draft. (In the cover story, available here on-line in the digital edition, both Loggains and general manager Mike Reinfeldt described how that meeting helped cement the Titans' decision to make Locker their top pick and "face of the franchise" in the near future.)

"The track coach came over to us (four Titans personnel), unsolicited, and told us highly complimentary things about Jake," Loggains said. "He then talked about Jake's new wife, also a collegiate athlete at Washington (volleyball). And then he said, 'Even the dog is well-trained.'"

Jake Locker's training, in athletics and in life, began with a home life that virtually everyone NW Business Monthly talked to referred to as "well grounded." Jake, during his interview, credited both of his parents, Scott and Anita, with strong positive influences on him as an athlete and as a person. "My mother taught all of us (the Lockers also have two daughters) humility," Locker said. "I learned from her that what we did and things we achieved didn't make us better than anybody, and that you treat everybody with respect."

He pointed to his father as his best friend and clearly the main influence in his approach to athletics, from organized football, basketball, and baseball to recreational competition in tennis and golf. ("I've often wondered, and was just talking to a friend about this the other day," Jake said in an aside. "What might it have been like if I'd tried to be just as good in another sport?" He mentioned golf and, as a person growing up a stone's throw from Canada, hockey as what-if's.)

Jake grew up in total athletic surroundings. Nearly every relative in a tightly-knit, large family has participated in scholastic sports, and many at the college level. He played pretty much everything as a kid, but football was limited to flag and touch versions until sixth grade. He started then in a league sponsored by the Ferndale Boys & Girls Club, and Scott Locker was his first coach.

Scott's nickname is "Meat." One reason is that he loves to cook out. He has a massive grill, at which you can see him below flipping a burger for his good friend and tailgate companion, John Huntley, president and owner of Mills Electric in Bellingham, during Mills's 100th anniversary celebration in September.

"The nickname started because of that movie, 'Bull Durham' (1988) and my brother," Scott Locker explained. A principal character, "Crash" Davis played by Kevin Costner, is a catcher and he dubbed the rookie pitcher, Ebby LaLoosh played by Tim Robbins, as "Meat." Scott Locker said, "My brother was a catcher, and he started calling me Meat."

As Coach Locker, he started son Jake at halfback. That seemed natural. Four Locker brothers -- Scott, Mike, John, and Patrick -- had played halfback, both in high school and at Western Washington University. Patrick Locker still holds a rushing record at Western with more than 4,000 yards, and he was named Western's Player of the Century.

As you can see in a family photo here, Jake Locker seemed destined as a 6th grader in the Ferndale Boys & Girls Club youth league to become the next in that legacy of RBs. "I'd just line Jake up six yards deep, pitch him the ball, and let him fly," Scott Locker said. That lasted through three seasons.

Then, going into 9th grade, Locker and his family met with Vic Randall, the head football coach at the time and now athletic director at Ferndale High. He had watched Locker run on a track, and observed him playing basketball ("that's a great sport to see a player's athletic ability"), and Randall decided who would be Ferndale's QB of the future.

That started a sequence of learning under numerous head coaches, quarterback coaches, and offensive coordinators from Ferndale to Seattle to Nashville.

Scott and Anita Locker attended Jake's first NFL game, a preseason encounter in August in which he threw an improvised touchdown pass after fumbling a snap, picking it up and scrambling out of trouble. "I was trying to get out of bounds or throw it away," he told media afterward.

Scott Locker, in our magazine piece, described it this way: "...It did my heart good when I watched him botch a snap, improvise, and throw a bullet for a touchdown...."

Soon after, a family first occurred. For the first time in their son's life and 13 football seasons, Scott and Anita were not present. They missed the rest of preseason and the opener on the road before attending the Titans' first home game.

In our Web Exclusives here, we will stay in touch with the Locker family throughout Jake's rookie season for updates.

We also will add more family photos, some original photos, and many anecdotal moments about Locker from fields of Ferndale to NFL stadiums.

You'll find amusement in ways that Jake is compatible with Nashville (he sang Garth Brooks's classic "Friends in Low Places" on karaoke at his wedding reception during the summer). You'll learn all about Grandmother Locker's Apple Pie. You'll hear from numerous coaches, his agents, and insights from the Locker family -- his parents, Anita and Scott, and his sisters, Alyssa and Erika.

Meanwhile, the printed story is also available in our digital version on line here. There you see Locker on his first day of practice, both on the field and at the podium addressing reporters, and in his high school uniform. He's pictured with his agents, David Dunn (table of contents) and Cam Hahn, and conferring with a rep from the Topps trading card company.

Because of time constraints on Locker's time at home during the summer of NFL discontent, waiting out a lock-out by the owners, we didn't get a studio shot of Locker in a  business suit as we had hoped. Pictured here a few years back, Jake wore the suit-of-suits, a tux, during a senior class function, carrying a football and striking a familiar pose. This family-album shot serves the purpose of depicting the crossover between sport and business.

Enjoy, and stay tuned....