John Idzik begins his sixth season with the Seahawks after joining the club on February 16, 2007. With Seattle, Idzik oversees player negotiations, the team’s compliance with the NFL salary cap, player personnel transactions, all football operations budgets, staff and team contracts, team travel and most aspects of the day-to-day football operations while also remaining active in player evaluations. In addition, he serves as the club’s primary liaison to the NFL Office and represents the club at League meetings.
Prior to joining the Seahawks, Idzik spent three seasons as Senior Director of Football Operations for the Arizona Cardinals, helping to build an eventual NFC champion. Idzik entered the NFL in 1993 with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. He spent 11 years with the Buccaneers, first as a Pro Personnel Assistant and then was elevated to Director of Football Administration in 1996 and Assistant General Manager in 2001. Prior to his tenure with the Buccaneers, Idzik spent the 1991-92 seasons as a graduate assistant coach at Duke University, where he assisted with the offensive line and running backs. In 1990 he was the offensive backfield coach for the Aberdeen Oilers (Scotland) of the British American Football League. Idzik’s first coaching assignment came in 1982 as receivers coach at the State University of New York at Buffalo.
Raised in a football family, Idzik’s father, also John, was the head coach of the Aberdeen club after serving as an NFL assistant coach for the Miami Dolphins, Baltimore Colts, Philadelphia Eagles, and N.Y. Jets. They became one of the NFL’s few father-son Super Bowl champions in 2003 when the younger Idzik’s Buccaneers won Super Bowl XXXVII, as his father was the offensive backfield coach of the Super Bowl V champion Baltimore Colts.
A native of Detroit, Idzik graduated with magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa honors from Dartmouth College in 1982 earning a bachelor’s degree in mathematics, where he also played wide receiver for the Ivy League Champion Big Green. He later earned a master’s degree in liberal studies from Duke University in 1992.
Idzik and his wife, Carol (a University of Georgia graduate), have two sons, Bryant (a senior and captain of the Formula SAE racing team at Western Washington University) and Bradley (a sophomore wide receiver at Wake Forest University), and a daughter, Holly (a senior at Mercer Island High School).
