Seahawks left guard Mike Iupati calls it quits

The Seahawks were not likely to re-sign left guard Mike Iupati this offseason. But now any chance of that happening is non-existent as Iupati is retiring. Iupati was not great in 2020 on an underperforming offensive line but let’s not forget that during his career Iupati was mostly really good.

Maybe almost all of those years were when Iupati played with the 49ers and then the Cardinals. Iupati spent his entire 11-year career playing for every team in the NFC West except for the Los Angeles Rams. For four-straight seasons between 2012 and 2015, Iupati made the Pro Bowl. And in 2012 he was First-Team All-Pro.

But then injuries began to affect Iupati’s career. In 2017 he played in just one game. This after playing in and starting every game from his rookie season of 2010 through 2012. In 2018 he missed six games. In 2019, Iupati joined the Seahawks.

Seahawks with Mike Iupati

12s shouldn’t forget that Iupati was a decent player in Seattle, though he catches a lot of flack for not being a good left guard. The problem wasn’t Iupati’s play, it was his health. Had Iupati stayed healthy, the offensive line would have been better.

In 2020, Iupati played on 317 pass-block snaps and allowed one sack. One. Iupati was graded as the 37th-best guard – left or right – in the NFL last year. This meant that Iupati was in the top half of the league as far as his quality of play this past season. When it came to run-blocking, Iupati was 15th-best.

And maybe that is the issue. Because while Iupati was 15th-best in run-blocking, right guard Damien Lewis was fifth-best, per PFF. This meant that Seattle should have run more and didn’t and the fact they didn’t was glaring in the playoffs versus the Rams when Chris Carson ran well but was underused.

But Iupati shouldn’t have been re-signed for 2021. His health wasn’t going to get better and his quality would have gone down. Still, Iupati was a good player in his career and his Seattle time came at the end of that. Had the Seahawks had Mike Iupati earlier in his career, this would have been a much different article.