Germain Ifedi is gone. Seahawks’ former top pick signs with Chicago--for only one year
Seahawks fans won’t have Germain Ifedi around to rip anymore. He’s out of Seattle, on a deal that is less than he had to have been expecting.
The Seahawks’ first-round draft choice from 2016 agreed on Wednesday to a one-year contract with the Chicago Bears 10 days into the NFL free-agent period. Ian Rapoport of the NFL Network first reported the deal for Seattle’s now-former right tackle.
The one-year contract and fact it came well into the secondary waves of free agency show Ifedi did not get what he was seeking on the open market as a four-year starting tackle in the NFL. He got but a single season from the Bears while one of his backups, George Fant, got a three years at $10 million per season from the New York Jets.
That was last week, in the first days of free agency. Fant was Seattle’s part-time tackle and extra blocking tight end the last few seasons.
The Seahawks signed free agent Brandon Shell from the New York Jets for two years and $11 million last week. Shell, the great nephew of Hall of Famer Art Shell, turned 28 last month. He was the Jets’ fifth-round draft choice in 2016.
For those into Pro Football Focus ratings, which are notoriously debatable for offensive linemen in particular: PFF rated Ifedi 63.3 in pass protection and 58.8 in run blocking in 2019. It had Shell at 64.7 in pass blocking and 63.6 in the run game.
Ifedi’s time in Seattle was dwindling 10 months before the Seahawks signed Shell. The team decided last May not to exercise the fifth-year option for which Ifedi was eligible as a first-round pick. That option would have paid Ifedi $10.35 million in 2020 to remain Seattle’s right tackle. That’s a few more million than Ifedi’s play had warranted through three years.
It was almost $9 million more than his $1.58 million base salary for 2019. That was the final year of the four-year rookie contract Ifedi signed in 2016 worth $8.3 million as Seattle’s first-round draft choice that year.
First-round picks have four-year rookie contracts that automatically include team options for a fifth season at a cost set by the NFL, per the league’s collective bargaining agreement.
Ifedi began his NFL career as the Seahawks’ starting right guard under former line coach Tom Cable, the man who drafted him. Ifedi’s struggles as a rookie led Seattle to move him in 2017 back to right tackle, his college position at Texas A&M.
Ifedi was the league’s most penalized player that ‘17 season, going from seven penalties at guard as a rookie to 20 at tackle. He often got false-start penalties getting out of his stance too early trying to get a jump start on faster edge pass rushers. And when he got out to those edge rushers he often got caught holding them. Seventeen of his 20 penalties that season were for holding or false starts. He had 13.5 percent of all Seahawks flags.
Before the 2018 season Mike Solari replaced Cable as Seattle’s line coach. Ifedi improved in Solari’s more direct, physical, man-on-man blocking system. And he cut his penalties by almost half, to 11 in 2018. Last season, Ifedi tied for third-most accepted penalties in the league with 13. Eight were false starts, five were for holding.
After this past season, and 52 flags in 60 career games, the Seahawks decided they’d seen enough. They pursued and ultimately signed Shell.
That deal suggests Jamarco Jones, whom the team drafted two years ago from Ohio State to eventually be a starting NFL tackle, may become the new left guard instead of right tackle. Jones impressed Seahawks coaches in his first games of his life at guard last season as an injury replacement for D.J. Fluker.
Seahawks left tackle Duane Brown is 35 years old coming off knee surgery in December. His $34.5 million contract ends after 2021.
