RENTON — The city where Godwin Igwebuike once thought his professional football career might have ended for good is where he’s hoping that maybe, finally, it will take off for real.
“I’m still in awe,” Igwebuike said Wednesday standing in front of his locker at the VMAC of having been signed by the Seahawks the day before to their 53-man roster for the rest of the season. “It’s definitely been an incredible blessing.”
The signing came in the wake of Igwebuike having awed the team with his kickoff returns the previous three weeks after being elevated from the practice squad.
Igwebuike has averaged 28.3 yards on nine kickoff returns, with a long of 50 and at least one return in all three games of 31 yards or better. His average would lead the NFL if he had enough attempts to qualify.
“He earned it so obviously,” coach Pete Carroll said Wednesday. “He’s been such a factor in the kicking game, and not just in the returns, but other aspects also.”
Indeed, Igwebuike has also been a regular on kick and punt coverage teams the last three weeks, credited with one tackle while also serving as a backup running back, though he has yet to play on offense.
“It’s a really good story,” Carroll said. “He is hard-nosed, tough and was ready for it and fired up about it, too. He just wants to help us. So it’s a great story.”
It’s a story that has included stints with six NFL teams since 2018, two leagues, and at least one moment when Igwebuike wondered if he’d ever play again.
That came after Igwebuike spent spring 2020 playing for the Seattle Dragons of the XFL.
Back then, he was still a safety, the position he played in college at Northwestern and in one game with Tampa Bay and five more with the 49ers in 2018.
But after being released by the Jets in August 2019, Igwebuike was temporarily out of football until the XFL came calling, offering another opportunity.
“I was like, ‘Shoot, it looks like my only shot is to make some splash in the XFL and maybe get some attention,’” he said.
Igwebuike signed on, and like the rest of the Dragons, he lived in a downtown Seattle hotel where all meetings and conditioning workouts were held, then practicing at Memorial Stadium.
“Was like a little stone locker room, cold as bricks,” Igwebuike said.
But he was happy just to have a shot to play again, saying he hoped, if not planned, that it would lead straight to getting into an NFL camp later that spring or summer.
Things started off well as Igwebuike made 21 tackles in the first four games for the Dragons.
But then COVID-19 hit and the XFL not only stopped play in March but eventually shuttered its doors until deciding to begin anew in 2023.
And with NFL teams having to go virtual for offseason workouts, Igwebuike said he got no calls.
So Igwebuike returned to his home in Columbus, Ohio, and having earned a real estate license, began dabbling in flipping a few houses with his mother, Ebony, who he said has been a real estate agent for roughly 30 years.
“I was like trying to figure out if I was going to hang the cleats up,” Igwebuike said. “But I just had a conviction that if I kept going, the Lord would honor that. … You just try to figure out ways to make it [outside of football]. But at the same time, you’re just still grinding. And I knew what I wanted. I knew what my heart’s desire was. I knew what I was praying for.”
He had tryouts in fall 2020 with Detroit and Green Bay but said he didn’t hear from either team again until the following January when the Lions called and signed him to a futures contract.
That helped lead to the next turning point of Igwebuike’s career. As is common during offseason drills, Igwebuike a few times played the role of ball carrier against some of his fellow defensive players.
“I started making some guys miss and they were like, ‘Wait a second,’” said Igwebuike, who is the nephew of Donald Igwebuike, who kicked for Tampa Bay from 1985-89.
Anthony Lynn, at the time Detroit’s offensive coordinator, asked him if he’d ever played running back. Igwebuike had at Pickerington High School North outside of Columbus and sent Lynn his Hudl compilation of high-school highlights as proof.
That eventually led to Detroit coach Dan Campbell telling Igwebuike in fall camp they wanted to convert him full-time to running back. He played all 17 games for the Lions last year on special teams and as a running back, getting one start and rushing for 118 yards on 18 carries, including a 42-yard TD at Pittsburgh while averaging 24.8 yards on 28 kickoff returns.
All of that helped him become one of the starring attractions when “Hard Knocks” featured the Lions this year.
But that didn’t help Igwebuike make the team as he was released in the cutdown to 53, again returning to Columbus with his career in limbo.
As the phone stayed silent, Igwebuike became increasingly confused.
“I had put enough on tape last year, I’m like, ‘Somebody gotta holler at your boy,’” he said. “I was at the crib like, ‘Damn, I didn’t do nothing last year?’”
But when Travis Homer went out with an injury against Atlanta on Sept. 25, the phone finally rang with Seattle offering a practice-squad spot.
That lasted a month until he was released Oct. 25. But the Seahawks had told him to stay in shape as they’d call again if the need arose.
“But I’ve heard that before, I will say, and I still ain’t heard back from that team,” Igwebuike said with a smile. “So I think you take everything with a grain of salt with this league.”
But two weeks later, on Nov. 8, the Seahawks called again to ask him to fill a practice-squad spot.
And when DeeJay Dallas — Seattle’s primary kickoff returner this season — sprained his ankle a few weeks later at Los Angeles, Igwebuike was told heading into the Carolina game Dec. 11 that he would be elevated and might handle kickoff returns.
On his second attempt, he broke one 50 yards to set up a touchdown. On his third, he returned it 35 yards to set up a field goal.
And while it might be hyperbole to say a star was born with those returns, a role, at least, might have been won as Igwebuike, 28, figures to have done enough to factor in Seattle’s plans at that spot for next year, as well.
And for Igwebuike, it all brings him back to those two games he played at Lumen Field for the Dragons in front of a half-full stadium.
“We were like, ‘Man, how cool would it be to play here [for the Seahawks],’” Igwebuike said of his time in the XFL. “To be able to carry that on now and be on this squad and just represent for all my boys trying to make a dream out of nothing, it’s definitely a blessing for sure.”