Seattle Seahawks right tackle Germain Ifedi is set to be an unrestricted free agent after the 2019 season. While some fans will be sad to see him go because he is still young and possesses upside, others have long grown weary of both waiting for improvement and his penalties. In the past I’ve looked at some of the patterns behind his penalties, including the fact that his holding penalties predominantly happen on a scramble or run to the right where he fails to disengage, while his false starts disproportionately happen when lined up across from a player taken early in the draft.
Both of those patterns stayed true against the Pittsburgh Steelers in Week 2. It was the case that on a Chris Carson run up the middle Ifedi was called for his first ever holding penalty on an inside run, but his later hold and his false start were both true to his patterns. He failed to release Tyson Alualu quickly enough as Wilson rolled out of the pocket to the right, which led to yet another holding penalty that was exactly in line with the overwhelming majority of his holding penalties.
Then, there was his false start against the Steelers. It came while lined up across from T.J. Watt, who was a first round pick back in 2017. That’s noteworthy simply because of the fact that of Ifedi’s 21 career false starts, 17 of them have come when he was lined up across from a player drafted in the first half of the second round or higher. Those are definitely interesting trends, but for today we’ll be looking at something else.
Specifically, the Week 2 game against the Steelers was the fifth time in 46 career games in which Ifedi recorded three penalties. That in and of itself is obviously startling enough, but even more interesting (at least to me) is that four of the five games in which he’s had three penalties have come on four of the ten longest road trips of his career. Getting right to the point, Ifedi’s played in 24 road games for the Hawks during his career, and of those 24 games, ten have involved a flight to a city that is more than 1,950 miles from Seattle. And of those ten games, he’s had three penalties four times.
So, in short, he’s played eight career games in the Eastern Time Zone, and he’s recorded three penalties in three of those eight games (the fourth game in which he had three penalties came against the Tennessee Titans in 2017, and while parts of Tennessee are in the Eastern Time Zone, Nashville is a little over 100 miles into the Central Time Zone). Staying on the topic of the Central Time Zone, Ifedi’s played six games in the Central Time Zone, getting three flags in one of those six games.
So, what’s that mean? Who knows? At this point it’s just an interesting factoid. However, of note, the Seahawks have four more games in the Eastern Time Zone this year, including:
- October 13 at the Cleveland Browns,
- October 27 at the Atlanta Falcons,
- November 24 at the Philadelphia Eagles and
- December 15 at the Carolina Panthers.
Which, of course, means there will be ample opportunity over the final fourteen games of the season to see if this “pattern” continues, or if it was simply randomness.