RENTON — Much like Andrew Luck, his old college teammate at Stanford, Doug Baldwin listened to his aching body and walked away from football in May.
Now it’s barely a week from the start of the NFL season, and Baldwin’s former Seahawks teammates are assembled at the Virginia Mason Athletic Center, fervently preparing for the opener. Baldwin, a still-vital 30, sits in street clothes a few miles down the road at Renton City Hall, explaining that it doesn’t feel weird at all to be absent from the game, and the process, that was his life for so long.