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Boardman’s Vallos happy to be in Ohio
By JOE SCALZO
YOUNGSTOWN
Like a lot of kids who grew up in Boardman in the 1980s, Steve Vallos spent Sunday afternoons rooting for a former Spartans quarterback named Bernie Kosar as he led the Browns to the team’s most magical seasons of the last 45 years.
“Bernie was Boardman’s only NFL guy,” Vallos said. “He was so good and it was right at the age when I started getting into football.”
It took two decades but Browns fans finally have another Boardman native to cheer for in Cleveland.
Vallos, a 2002 Boardman graduate, was signed by the Browns on Monday after the center was cut by the Seattle Seahawks on Sunday.
“My parents were so happy, you have no idea,” said Vallos, who got a “million text messages” from friends and family this week. “I went from playing in the farthest NFL city to [one of] the closest [ones].”
Vallos, who played in all 16 games for the Seahawks over the past two years, wasn’t stunned by his release. Since Pete Carroll was hired to replace Jim Mora in the offseason, Carroll has gutted the roster. As of Wednesday, only 26 Seahawks remained from last season’s roster — fewest in the league. The NFL average is 37.
“It’s always in the back of your head, no matter what the situation,” Vallos said about being cut. “Even if Jim Mora was still the coach, there’s so many new guys every year.
“I didn’t know what was going to happen but I knew I could only control what I can control.”
Vallos survived Saturday’s cut-down day but, he said, “I knew they had new moves to make.”
Once he got Sunday’s news, he knew the Browns would be a possibility, because Cleveland president Mike Holmgren was Seattle’s coach when Vallos was drafted in the seventh round in 2007.
What he didn’t know was how long it would take to find a team. Vallos mentally prepared himself for the possibility that it might take a few weeks or a month, when injuries start to affect NFL rosters.
“It was just exciting to know somebody wanted me,” Vallos said. “It wasn’t really much of a lapse [between teams], only a day, but it felt like forever. In reality, no team could have picked me up sooner.”
“It was a good day for me and my wife.”
Vallos and his wife, Lindsey (a Seattle native), were married in April. He has spent this week living in a hotel room and he’s still adjusting to the time change.
“I’m dying,” he said, laughing. “I’m on West Coast time and I’m waking up here at 6 and it’s like it’s 3.”
Although he’s on the Browns’ 53-man roster — Vallos has too much NFL experience to be eligible for a team’s practice squad — he won’t make today’s 45-man active roster against Tampa Bay. Much of his work this week has been spent learning the playbook.
“The hardest thing is the terminology, all the calls,” he said. “I’ve just got to find a correlation with what I know to what it is here.
“I’m getting it down pretty good.”
Vallos is one of two Boardman grads in the NFL — Rams lineman John Greco, who was a year behind Vallos, is the other — and those two are the only Spartans behind Kosar to play in the league.
Since Seahawks games aren’t exactly a TV staple around here — Vallos’ mom, Susan, said earlier this week that she’d make it to about three games a year and “the rest was Direct TV” — Vallos is happy more of his friends will get to see him play.
“It’s hard to get a Seahawks game on in Ohio unless you go to a bar and request it,” Vallos said. “It’ll be good to be so close to home.”