In some ways you can expect to find linebacker Manti Te’o right back where he started, determined to prove himself in the NFL.
Again.
This time it comes after an oscillating six-season resume, working — and hoping — to earn himself a seventh.
His current agreement, a two-year contract with the New Orleans Saints, expires March 13, making him an unrestricted free agent able to field offers from any interested suitors.
This time, the former Notre Dame All-American and 2012 Heisman Trophy runner-up is 28 years old and coming off what is surely his most frustrating season for reasons of more than the botched call that helped deny the Saints a berth in the Super Bowl.
While his team went to the NFC Championship game, Te’o was a spectator for much of the season, playing just five games overall and seeing action just once after Week 8. But unlike other times in what has been an injury-cursed career, he spent more time on the inactive list due to roster space than injury.
Injuries — a fractured foot (2013), foot stress fracture (2014), high ankle sprain (2015) and torn Achilles tendon (2016) — combined to cost him more than 45 percent of the Chargers’ games in his four-year stay in San Diego.
When Te’o was healthy, he showed flashes of being the player the Chargers traded up to take in the second round of the 2013 NFL Draft, where he was intent on using his play on the field and leadership in the locker room to put the “catfishing” episode behind him. He started 12 games in 2015, leading the Chargers with 107 tackles and finishing the season as a defensive captain and a fan favorite.
The injury-dotted history allowed New Orleans to sign Te’o to a free-agent deal in 2017 at the bargain rate of $5 million over two seasons, and it paid off handsomely for the Saints. That year, for the first time in his career, Te’o played 16 games, starting 11 of them, and made 62 tackles, including seven for losses.
The 2018 season began promisingly enough as a starter for the Saints before he suffered an early-season knee injury. But when he was cleared to return after three games, he was suddenly an odd man out, as the Saints had moved on, adopted alignments and depth charts that largely left him out of the picture.
As such it would be a surprise if he is offered another deal by the Saints, whose top three linebackers return. Demario Davis and Alex Anzalone are under contract through 2020 and A.J. Klein’s deal runs through 2019, according to Spotrac.
How much interest there will be elsewhere is both a looming question and an apparent point of motivation — one that has no doubt inspired his offseason training regimen in San Diego, where he retains a residence.
“The best thing about this whole situation (in New Orleans) … is that it made me self-evaluate,” Te’o told the New Orleans Times-Picayune. “It made me sharpen my edges. It made that fire hotter.”
Te’o told the paper, “That little extra is the thing that pushed me over, and that little extra is that thing that reminded me of what it took to be the best before I got here. And I know that I can be that for somebody. Whether it’s (in New Orleans) or whether it’s somewhere else, if they don’t know (now), they’ll know. They’re about to see, and I’m excited for that.”
Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.
