Seahawks GM: ‘We’d like to get rollin’ with’ Josh Gordon again, pending NFL reinstatement
The door is open to the Seahawks signing former All-Pro wide receiver Josh Gordon, for a third time.
Seattle general manager John Schneider was on the pregame show on the team’s radio network Sunday before its game at Minnesota. He was asked about whether the Seahawks would be interested in signing Gordon back, pending his reported reinstatement by NFL commissioner Roger Goodell from a league suspension, a move that could happen this coming week.
“Obviously, he’s somebody who’s great in Seattle,” Schneider told KIRO AM and the Seahawks’ radio network from Minneapolis.
That’s a reference to the Seahawks and Gordon both describing his six-week stint with the team during the 2019 season as a great fit. It’s also a reference to Gordon living and training in the Seattle area the last two years he’s been out of the league.
Schneider said if and when the NFL officially reinstates Gordon, “we’d like to get rollin’ with him.”
ESPN’s Adam Schefter reported Friday the league had decided to reinstate Gordon from his eighth NFL suspension for drugs.
“We are grateful that the NFL appreciates the work that Josh put in and now he has earned another opportunity to be part of this league,” Gordon’s agent Zac Hiller said, per Schefter. “We are proud of Josh, and I know all the fans can’t wait to see him on Sundays.”
An NFL spokesman for Goodell did not respond to a message this weekend about Gordon’s possible reinstatement.
Seahawks coach Pete Carroll said Friday he’s always welcoming the 30-year-old Gordon back to the Seahawks — if the opportunity arises. Gordon last played in the league for the Seahawks, in December 2019.
Carroll didn’t sound as if he’d heard the news of Gordon re-entering the league when he talked to reporters following his team’s practice Friday. He and the Seahawks then boarded their jet bound for their game Sunday at Minnesota.
“I’m not going to say much about that. I hadn’t heard all that, yet,” Carroll said.
“But I’ve always thought a lot of Josh. I kind of feel for him. He’s been a local kid, as well, he’s been around here in the area and stuff (training). We’ll see what happens. He’s been — just like everybody, he deserves another chance. And hopefully that’s what’s going on.”
Gordon said in December 2019 he believed he had found a new home and new start on life in Seattle and with the Seahawks, who signed him following the New England Patriots waiving him because of his problems. Gordon was on the Seahawks’ active roster for six weeks that 2019 season.
The Seahawks released Gordon this offseason so he could sign a contract with the new Fan Controlled Football league streamed live on Twitch, the world’s leading online gamer platform.
Carroll was asked Friday if he told Gordon upon releasing him March 4 that the coach and the Seahawks would welcome him back to the team if Goodell and the NFL ever reinstates him.
“I’ve never not talked about that with Josh,” Carroll said. “I’ve always been on that topic for him.
“Sorry, I don’t have much information to say much with, at this point. But I’ve always felt that way.
“So, we’ll see what happens.”
At 6-foot-3 and 225 pounds, Gordon is a DK Metcalf-sized target who is more proven, so far, than Seattle’s wowing third-year pro. The Seahawks loved what Gordon gave them in his six weeks with them in 2019.
Foremost, Carroll embraces second chances and reclamation projects. He loves to help 20-something men turn their lives around. Carroll, 70, has supreme confidence in his players-first, intensely personal principles of leading. He believes his team environment can rehabilitate almost anyone into achieving their maximum potential.
Carroll and general manager John Schneider have pursued any and all possibilities of reinforcing the Seahawks in their 12 years running the team, regardless of background or circumstance. They “checked into” (Carroll’s words in 2019) possibly signing troubled Antonio Brown, before they signed Gordon that season.
Days before he got suspended in December 2019, Gordon said he’d like to play for Seattle for as long as he could see. He particularly appreciated that while he was in a new city thousands of miles from his two 4-year-old children who were back in Cleveland in November, 2019, his new teammates opened their homes to him during that Thanksgiving.
“Oh, yeah, absolutely. Seattle is amazing,” he said at his locker in the Seahawks facility in Renton days before his last NFL game.
“Yeah, football aside, I would definitely love to live in a place like this. ...
“I think, optimistically, that’s anybody’s goal, any player’s goal, to try to find a place you can call home — in all aspects.
“The culture’s just different. I think it’s something that felt more like a fit, I guess, to me. It’s pretty natural. It’s pretty smooth.
“It’s just my pace, I guess.”
The league has suspended him eight times since Gordon began with the Cleveland Browns in 2012 and the eighth overall. The Browns suspended him once, a year after his breakout season of 2013 when he had 1,646 yards and nine touchdowns receiving.
He hasn’t played a full season since. He has said he began abusing substances in grade school — Xanax, marijuana, codeine — at a time a kid should not even know what those substances are. He has said as a teen he smoked marijuana daily and drank vodka in a bottle of orange juice during school classes.
The terms of the otherwise confidential NFL drug-testing program include a suspended player having to comply with league-ordered counseling and support meetings. Carroll said in December 2019 the Seahawks learned upon signing him Gordon also has his own, personal support group he’s depended upon to get reinstated by the league previously.
So the systems seem to be in place for Gordon to return to the Seahawks, with Carroll’s and now Schneider’s public support.
This story was originally published September 26, 2021 at 12:49 PM.
