Of all of the Seattle Seahawks players, perhaps none was more excited to put on his pads in training camp this week than tight end Will Dissly.
Dissly has been through his share of struggles during his professional career. During his rookie season in 2018, he suffered a torn patellar tendon Week 4 against the Cardinals after a promising start to the year. In 2019, Dissly went down in Week 6 with an Achilles tear that he described as “crushing.”
“There was a good week or so where I was in a bad place, mentally,” Dissly admitted in Tuesday’s press conference of his post-injury mindset. “You’re isolated a lot when you get hurt, you’re removed from your team, your environment that you’re so used to. It could have been really easy for me to shut down and say that my career’s over.”
Thankfully, Dissly had a large support system around to help him battle through his mental struggles. Dissly’s Seahawks teammates were hugely involved in his journey back to the football field, as were his family and friends from back home in Bozeman, MT. “You lean on those (people) to kind of bring you up,” he said. “If you’re in a bad place, you should be able to talk about it with your friends and family.”
Dissly has been exploring the relationship between the mind and success ever since his college years at Washington, when his former coach Chris Petersen gave him a book titled “The Slight Edge: Turning Simple Disciplines into Massive Success & Happiness.” Since then, he said, he has read a lot of books about the mental aspect of life on and off of the field. “One thing I’ve learned just in the last two years is how powerful your mind is,” he explained. “My main philosophy is ‘what you look for is what you’ll find.’”
To him, it’s all about the attitude – the one thing he can control when he finds himself in a less-than-ideal situation. “It’s not just about being positive, it’s about being purposeful,” Dissly believes.
For now, that purpose is to play in – and win – Super Bowl LV.
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