Latest Pete Carroll reclamation project: Seahawks sign ex-Cards top pick Robert Nkemdiche
Say what you will about how the Seahawks build rosters each year.
At least they are consistent.
As Pete Carroll said on Wednesday they would, the Seahawks signed yet another veteran defensive lineman for their pass rush Thursday. He’s another former first-round draft choice they heavily scouted and considered a few years ago.
And he’s yet another veteran who comes with off-the-field incidents in his recent past.
Seattle announced the signing of defensive tackle Robert Nkemdiche on the morning of the NFL draft. The 26-year-old was the 29th-overall pick of the Arizona Cardinals in the 2016 draft.
He hasn’t played in two years.
Some saw Nkemdiche as a top-five draft pick five years ago. Some say him as NFL ready when he arrived at the University of Mississippi as the top pass-rushing recruit in college football. He was 6 feet 3, 293 pounds with athleticism and speed of a receiver.
Then he got arrested the winter before the 2016 draft. He was drunk and fell out of a hotel window at the end of his final season at Mississippi. He got cited for marijuana possession as part of the same incident.
Asked at league’s scouting combine for the 2016 draft about the inconsistency between him saying he was drunk and being cited by the police for possession of marijuana, Nkemdiche said: “There were more people in my room. The hotel was under my name. Nobody wanted to take the fall. It had to go under my name. It just happened to play out like that.”
He fell to 29th overall, to the Cardinals. In three years with them he had 4 1/2 sacks. All of those came in one season, 2018. In that last year the Cardinals benched Nkemdiche, then he tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his knee.
Police stopped him twice in traffic incidents in early 2019. He was out of shape for Arizona’s 2019 preseason, and the Cardinals cut him. Miami signed him. He played two games then got cut by the Dolphins. Then the league suspended him for two games, in November 2019.
A league spokesman told The News Tribune Thursday Nkemdiche violated the NFL policy on performance-enhancing drugs. He served his suspension while a free agent, unsigned throughout 2020.
He played for nobody last season.
Now he’s Carroll’s latest reclamation project. The league spokesman confirmed he’s clear to play for Seattle.
The Seahawks recently signed Aldon Smith. The former All-Pro pass rusher with San Francisco was arrested, jailed and released on bond after he allegedly beat up and choked to the point of unconsciousness a man in a coffee shop in Louisiana. That incident allegedly happened two days after Seattle signed Smith. He returned to the NFL with Dallas last season after being out of the league suspended from 2016-19.
Seahawks general manager John Schneider now regrets saying in 2012, in his first years as an NFL GM, that Seattle would never sign a player with domestic-violence issues in his past. Smith has that.
“The research is he was working out down in Los Angeles. We had people last year, people that were with him all the time, and we were interested last year,” Schneider said Wednesday of Smith. “Dallas basically outbid several other teams, and he was comfortable going there, had coaches on the staff that knew him, and they felt like they had a really good plan in place for him.
“In terms of his current situation, that’s not something we can talk about. We have to let the legal process take its course.
“And then with the domestic-violence portion, what I would say is...I’ve learned a lot about throwing out blanket statements about these sort of things, whether it’s DUIs or robberies or domestic situations. So right when we got here, I threw out a statement about it, and what I’ve learned over the years now is that every situation is completely different, and you have to study every situation and be comfortable with your decisions.
“We’ve researched it with Aldon. This last time, it was a minimum salary deal, and we decided to take a shot and go for it.”
Nkemdiche’s deal is likely the same as Smith’s one-year, veteran-minimum salary with no risk to the team. The Seahawks could cut him with no salary-cap ramifications if the signing does not work out.
The Seahawks have also re-signed two-time Pro Bowl defensive end Carlos Dunlap and Benson Mayowa and signed former 49ers end Kerry Hyder for their pass rush this offseason.
This story was originally published April 29, 2021 at 10:06 AM with the headline "Latest Pete Carroll reclamation project: Seahawks sign ex-Cards top pick Robert Nkemdiche."
