Packers Not Bringing Back Yiadom

The Green Bay Packers signed 11 players to futures deals on Tuesday, including 10 players with Packers ties and lightning-fast receiver Rico Gafford. One player who will not be asked back is cornerback Isaac Yiadom.

Yiadom was acquired from the New York Giants in exchange for Josh Jackson, a former second-round pick, midway through training camp. He played in 16 games with one start. That start came at Chicago in Week 6, when he was burned on the opening series and replaced – permanently, as it turned out – by Rasul Douglas, who emerged as a star.

The Packers released Yiadom and defensive tackle Jack Heflin last week to make room for the return of outside linebackers Za’Darius Smith and Whitney Mercilus on injured reserve.

While he didn’t play anything but garbage-time snaps on defense down the stretch, Yiadom was a key player on special teams, logging 307 snaps and three tackles while playing on the core phases of kickoff and kickoff return, punt and punt return. He was a quality gunner for most of the season but was penalized for kick-catch interference against Baltimore he plowed over Devin Duvernay.

“Ike was very upset,” special teams coordinator Maurice Drayton said at the time. “He obviously saw the fair catch call and he was going to run by the returner. Credit to their returner, a returner who has many returns under his belt. He was very savvy with the late fair catch signal, but Ike still had enough time to see it and get out of the way and the returner kind of nudged into him. So, credit to that guy, bad on our part. We’ll just have to break down sooner once we see that fair catch signal and he has to get out of the way.”

After the Packers lost to the 49ers in the playoffs due in part to three major malfunctions on special teams, Yiadom tweeted his defense of Drayton.