Seahawks Insider: Ethan Pocic, Germain Ifedi and Wally Pipp

RENTON – Germain Ifedi returned to practice for the Seahawks this week, but not before rookie Ethan Pocic made a strong impression at right tackle during the three days that Ifedi missed after his fight with teammate Frank Clark.

In fact, coach Pete Carroll even invoked a baseball metaphor to describe Pocic’s performance.

“Ethan has done a good job,” Carroll said. “This was a little bit of that Wally Pipp thing with Ethan getting the shot, and he jumped at it and did very well. Ethan continues to give us options and opportunities.”

Wally Pipp was the Yankees’ first baseman for 10 years until he supposedly complained of a headache, missing a game on June 2, 1925 when he was replaced by some guy named Lou Gehrig, who only played the next 2,130 games for the Yankees. It doesn’t matter how good Pocic is, he’s not going to play that many games for the Seahawks.

Now, the specifics of why Pipp missed that game remain debated almost 100 years later. His absence was attributed to a headache, the severity of which has been disputed.

We’ll see just how permanent Pocic is as part of Seattle’s line, and with Ifedi back, Pocic practiced at center for the first time in training camp.

“That’s just to really try to expand on his versatility,” Carroll said. “It makes a big difference on how we work things down the road here when we figure out what the roster looks like.”

Pocic was primarily a center at LSU, starting 27 games there. He started nine games at guard and one at right tackle, the position he has played primarily to begin this training camp. Still, Carroll said the competition between Ifedi and Pocic at right tackle is just that: a competition.

“Competition is everything around here, and he’s on it,” Carroll said of Pocic.

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