During the mid-to-late 2010s, the Seattle Seahawks struggled to find the same draft gems they found in the early part of the decade. One reason the team began to decline by the early 2020s is that the drafts in previous years had not been great.
This is especially true of early-round choices. Rashaad Penny was hurt too much to be good. LJ Collier was too bad to help. Malik McDowell (a second-round choice, but the team's first pick in 2017) was too addicted to ATVs to be productive. Germain Ifedi was Seattle's first-round choice in 2016 and never became what the team hoped.
Ifedi wasn't terrible in all phases of blocking (he wasn't horrible with pass protection at times), but he wasn't first-round worthy either. Plus, he had far too many silly penalties.
Former Seattle Seahawks first-round draft bust has probably played his last down in the NFL
But in the last few years, he has bounced around the league a bit. He was currently on his fourth team in five seasons with the Miami Dolphins after recently signing in free agency. The hope for Miami was that Ifedi's experience could help a team struggling to keep offensive linemen healthy. Unfortunately, Ifedi couldn't do that for long.
No player deserves to get hurt. If Germain Ifedi was going to get bounced out of the league, one might hope that would be based on poor play, not something he couldn't control. On Thursday, though, ESPN NFL reporter Adam Schefter tweeted that the Dolphins had placed Ifedi on injured reserve and he would miss the season.
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This came just 11 days after the offensive lineman signed with the Dolphins. Ifedi might have been a first-round bust who didn't get a second contract with the Seattle Seahawks, but no one probably wanted him to get hurt later in his career.
Now, he is 31 years old and won't be available again until 2026. It is more likely that Ifedi will never play again than that another NFL team will give him a chance with them. Teams feel iffy about giving players past 30 years old contracts anyway, but if the player has an injury history, the player is probably done.
The injury to Ifedi was undisclosed but appears to have happened in practice on Wednesday. Clearly, whatever happened was serious enough that the team knew right away he couldn't play this season.
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