Seahawks Spotlight: Dion Jordan says he ‘couldn’t have landed in a better situation’
Nov 15, 2017, 10:18 AM | Updated: 10:41 am
In his first game in over two years, Dion Jordan recorded a sack for the Seahawks. (AP)
(AP)
The Seahawks didn’t offer defensive end Dion Jordan a second chance.
The former first-round pick is way past that after being suspended by the NFL for a total of 22 regular-season games over his first three years in the league.
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What Seattle did provide Jordan is a landing spot to rebuild an NFL career considered so promising back in 2013 that not only did the Dolphins choose Jordan with the No. 3 overall choice of the draft, they traded up for the right to do so.
Jordan was suspended in 2015 and injured for all of 2016, and he came to Seattle this offseason with hopes of getting his career on track. Last week, he not only played in his first regular-season game in more than two years but also had a sack, and on Tuesday he was featured in the “Seahawks Spotlight” (listen here) which airs daily at 5 p.m. on “Danny, Dave and Moore.”
“I couldn’t have landed in a better situation,” Jordan said of coming to Seattle.
Seattle has had some success in that regard. Mike Williams – a former top-10 pick – signed with Seattle in 2010 and became the team’s leading receiver after his career had flat-lined. Buffalo gave up on Marshawn Lynch that same year, and the Seahawks acquired the player whose hard-running style became the heartbeat of the offense for two picks in the latter half of the draft.
But before Jordan could get going with Seattle, he suffered a setback with a knee injury that kept him from so much as taking the field to practice during training camp. There was a great deal of question whether he would even be available this season.
At least it was a question to everyone except Jordan.
“I made my mind up at a certain point in time,” Jordan said, “that I’m going to play football this year no matter what anybody says, and I just had to do the work. I put my head down, and I decided to just do the work and commit to myself that this is what I wanted. I made it happen.”
He returned to the field last Thursday in Arizona, which is where he played high-school football. He was on the field for 33 snaps and recorded his first sack.
It was the first regular-season NFL game Jordan had played in 1,047 days. He began last season on Miami’s non-football injury list. He practiced for three weeks in November before the team decided he wasn’t ready to play.
Now back on the field in Seattle, he’s taken the first step toward rebuilding his career.
“I couldn’t have come to a better place,” he said, “as a guy trying to come back here and revamp his career.”
