Today’s guest post comes from Miles Wray, a long-time reader of the site. He’s written an interesting post on special teams today, but you may know him as the host of the daily NBA podcast The 82 Review. You can also find him on Twitter @mileswray. What follows are Miles’ words: as always, we thank our guest writers for their contributions.

---

 

As Chase noted in December, the Seahawks’ Russell Wilson had an opportunity to be just the fifth quarterback to lead his NFL team in rushing yards — an accomplishment that even Michael Vick can’t claim. In the final weeks of the season, Wilson absolutely coasted home with this dubious title belt: he racked up 586 rushing yards, the second-highest total in his career.

That historically rare achievement may mask the historically unprecedented scenario in Seattle’s running backs room. Since the NFL schedule expanded to 16 games in 1978, there had only been six previous times when, at the end of the regular season, a team’s leading running back or fullback finished with less than 350 total yards. ^[1]Excluding strike-shortened seasons. But in all six of those other cases, that leading rusher still managed to top 300 yards on the season. Well, nobody in Seattle got past 250 this year:

While no football coach would volunteer to have a season where nary a single running back can manage to match 2016 Duke Johnson doing second-string duty for the 1-15 Browns (358 rushing yards), these seven seasons were hardly derailed on the whole. These seven teams averaged a record 8.1-7.9, and included two teams who actually won a playoff game — not to mention a 2017 Seahawks that beat the eventual Super Bowl champions.

A scenario like this year’s Seahawks team can only happen thanks to a perfect storm of bizarre injuries, coincidences, and mistakes, which is exactly what happened. No move looms larger in retrospect than John Schneider’s and Pete Carroll’s decision, on September 3rd, to cut 2016 5th-round draft pick Alex Collins. Collins would get picked up on the Ravens’ practice squad two days later, and four months later, he finished as the 11th-leading rusher in 2017.

Combined with the fleet Wilson, these running backs did accomplish something in that they did not look, from afar, like a notably weak rushing attack. The Seahawks finished 23rd in total rushing yards, 21st in yards per rush, and 22nd in rushing DVOA. So: below average, yes, but nothing historically awry. The only hint of true badness is that the Seahawks tied with the Dolphins for last in the league with only four rushing touchdowns. Miami can at least point to their midseason trade of Jay Ajayi. In Seattle, Wilson was responsible for three of those touchdowns, meaning Seahawks running backs managed a lone score all season.

Here’s a look at the small crowd of running backs who did get touches with Seattle this year, organized from least to most yards:

C.J. Prosise

Yards: 23

Average: 2.1

Games: 5

Prosise, the versatile darling of draft Twitter, has still only been seen with Bigfoot-like regularity on the football field. A healthy Prosise could be a transformational weapon in the passing game. But since he’s only appeared in 11 games over his first two seasons, it’s fair to wonder how long Carroll will Trust the Prosise.

Thomas Rawls

Yards: 157

Average Carry: 2.6

Games: 12

The one-time protégé of Beast Mode himself, Rawls has been unable to get past his extensive injury history, much like Prosise. When you go back to the start of Rawls’ collegiate career, he has appeared in 10 or more games in a season just three times in seven years. (It looks like Rawls only managed seven appearances as a high school senior, too.) Even though Rawls was healthy this year, it’s clear he lost Carroll’s trust, as his high workload on the season was only 11 carries, plus another three games played with zero carries.

Eddie Lacy

Yards: 179

Average: 2.6

Games: 9

While I personally feel bad for Lacy, who has been the butt of way too many jokes, it is also true that he out-earned the rest of the running backs room combined. In the five seasons since Lacy entered the league in 2013, he is 11th in the league in total rushing yards, a testament to how good those early years were. Still, it was Lacy’s sudden inability to be a reliable running back — he did average 5.1 yards per carry in an injury-shortened 2016 in Green Bay — that turned Seattle’s running backs into such a revolving door. 

J.D. McKissic

Yards: 187

Average: 4.1

Games: 13

With Prosise injured, the resourceful Seahawks were nonetheless able to find a young, dangerous pass-catcher off the street in McKissic.  He rushed for Seattle’s only running back rushing touchdown of the year, but the versatile player finished with exactly the same number of pass targets and rushing attempts: 46. McKissic’s 266 receiving yards made him the clear running backs leader in total yards from scrimmage, so it’s hard to blame him for this historical anomaly.

Chris Carson

Yards: 208

Average Carry: 4.2

Games: 4

The silver lining to Seattle’s weekly running back carousel is that they found their likely 2018 starter early in the season. If you look at the first four career games from every running back in Seahawks franchise history, Carson’s 208 yards are second only to three-time Pro-Bowler Curt Warner (who had an impressive 364). That’s a list that includes Ahman Green and Shaun Alexander, mind you. Mighty impressive stuff from a seventh-round pick who was playing in community college as recently as 2014. Then again: Carson was only healthy enough to appear in the first four games of the year. For three straight seasons the Seahawks have had cataclysmic health issues at running back — enough to suggest that there is a breakdown somewhere in the process, be it in the drafting process, training methods, or who knows.

Mike Davis

Yards: 240

Average Carry: 3.5

Games: 6 

Even though it is Davis’ name that may be front-and-center on this undesirable “record,” he must be given kudos for making the best of a bad situation. To call Davis the dark horse in this race for the team lead would be an understatement: he was not called up from the practice squad onto the active roster until November 14, after the team had already played more than half of its schedule. Davis also ended up being responsible for three of the top five biggest yardage games from any Seahawks running back in 2017.

Only Prosise and Carson are under contract with the team for next year. Even though Marshawn Lynch’s last full season with Seattle was in 2014, it still feels like his reign only just ended. So it feels weird to say: there’s still work to do this offseason if the Seahawks want to be confident that they’ll have a 300-yard running back in 2018.