Fred Hoaglin’s name does not dominate the early chapters of Seattle Seahawks history the way Steve Largent’s or Jim Zorn’s does, yet his quiet presence in 1976 helped give the expansion franchise its first real foothold on the line of scrimmage.
The long-time NFL center who spent one season with the Seahawks, has passed away at the age of 81.
Hoaglin’s lone season in Seattle marked both the end of an 11-year playing career and the beginning of a coaching path that would eventually bring him two Super Bowl rings with the New York Giants.
Born in Alliance, Ohio, and raised in nearby East Palestine, Hoaglin arrived in the Pacific Northwest already a seasoned professional.
Drafted by the Cleveland Browns in the sixth round in 1966 out of the University of Pittsburgh, he had started for seven seasons in Cleveland, earned a Pro Bowl berth in 1969, and later stopped briefly with the Baltimore Colts and Houston Oilers.
When the Seahawks selected him from the Oilers in the 1976 expansion draft, they were adding a 32-year-old veteran who knew how to snap a football under pressure and how to hold a pocket together when the roster around him was still taking shape.
In that inaugural Seahawks season the team finished 2-12, but Hoaglin appeared in 13 games and started seven of them at center. He lined up in front of a young Jim Zorn and alongside other expansion-draft veterans such as Norm Evans and John Demarie, providing a measure of stability on an offensive line that was otherwise learning on the job.
The numbers themselves were modest—one fumble recovery, no gaudy statistics—but the value of a reliable center on a brand-new franchise is rarely captured in box scores. Hoaglin gave Seattle a player who had already been through the weekly grind of the NFL for a decade, someone who could teach by example while the coaching staff under Jack Patera tried to build something lasting.
After the 1976 season Hoaglin stepped away from playing and into coaching. He spent seven years with the Detroit Lions before joining Bill Parcells’s staff with the Giants in 1985. There he spent eight seasons molding the offensive line that Parcells affectionately called the “Suburbanites,” a group that helped deliver Super Bowl XXI and Super Bowl XXV championships.
Later stops in New England and Jacksonville stretched his coaching career to 24 seasons. Through it all, the foundation remained the same craft he had practiced in Seattle: protecting the quarterback and creating lanes for the running game.
For Seahawks fans who dig into the franchise’s earliest years, Hoaglin stands as a reminder that the first roster was assembled from a mix of hope and experience. He was never a star in the blue and green, yet he was there when the franchise took its first snaps, anchoring the middle of the line for a team that had no history and almost no margin for error.
His death closes another chapter on the 1976 pioneers, those players who suited up when the Kingdome was new and the Seahawks were still introducing themselves to the league.
The organization and its supporters can remember him as one of their own, a steady professional who finished his playing days helping a new team find its footing before going on to win championships elsewhere.
