Lies, versatility, and special teams: How Nick Bellore has survived 13 years in the NFL

Bellore lied his way onto an NFL offense after a historic college career on defense

Anyone who thinks that special teams don’t matter, especially to Pete Carroll’s Seahawks, can look back to Leon Washington’s importance at the start of his Seattle career and to games that the team lost to the St. Louis Rams around that time, as well.

Carroll once recruited Matthew Slater, a potential Hall of Fame special teams ace for the New England Patriots, but lost out to UCLA because the head coach wanted him to be a defensive back instead of a receiver. Slater should have listened to Carroll.

Carroll probably wishes he would have just let Slater play whichever position he had wanted to secure him as a special teamer and a team captain.

Now he has Nick Bellore.

A few weeks ago, many of you voted for an origin story on Bellore, an undrafted free agent out of Central Michigan in 2011 who as of this offseason is signed through 2024 after playing four seasons for the Jets, two for the 49ers, two for the Lions, and the last four with the Seahawks.

Rare is the NFL player who spends at least 12 seasons in the league (zero weeks on the practice squad) without playing offense or defense, or being a punter, kicker, or longsnapper. There’s Slater, there’s Bellore, and there ain’t many more than that.

Even harder to find: Someone who plays offense and defense and gets the chance to enter his 13th season as an NFL player. Nick Bellore is a rare find, even by NFL standards, and apart from 2016 he has practically never been asked to meaningfully contribute to offense or defense.

That’s also the reason that Bellore has sometimes found himself in the crosshairs of fans who see his name among the 53 who have landed coveted spots on the roster and wonder, “Why not someone else who at least might become a star on either side of the ball?”

That’s not a concern for Carroll, who knows exactly how many games the Seahawks have lost because of a special teams mistake, and who couldn’t let Seattle lose one of their captains over a fraction of the salary that others makes.

"He's just everything to everybody," Seahawks coach Pete Carroll told reporters last August after Bellore was selected as a captain for the second straight year. "Playmaking, play style, mentality, all of that."

After signing a new two-year contract in February, Bellore emphasized that the feeling is mutual.

"Before I was here, this was always where I wanted to end up, just because you hear the lore of being here, then finally getting here and being around everybody in the building, there's no other place I'd want to be," Bellore said. "To be here late in my career has been incredible."

In four seasons, Bellore has played in exactly 100 offensive snaps and nine defensive snaps. His 352 special teams snaps in 2022 was the second-highest of his career, and though Seattle is continuously trying to better themselves on that side of the ball through the draft and free agency (Jonathan Sutherland was the first four-time team captain in Penn State history because of special teams), Pete’s nowhere near ready to give into fans who don’t agree with spending $2.6 million and a roster spot on a pure coverage artist.

But it’s not as though being used solely on special teams—or halfheartedly on offense and defense—was ever Plan A for Nick Bellore. “If ever there was a true star player in Whitefish Bay history, it has to be Nick Bellore.”

Fittingly, the only other NFL player from Whitefish Bay was also a special teams Pro Bowler.

How did it all start?

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