With Chris Carson contract ending, Pete Carroll hints it’s possible Carson leaves Seahawks
Pete Carroll is Chris Carson’s biggest public cheerleader.
The Seahawks’ veteran coach has been that from the last hours of the 2017 draft. That’s when Seattle selected Carson. Carroll raved that day about his seventh-round pick from Oklahoma State by way of junior college, particularly about his toughness and attitude.
No wonder Carroll loves him. Carson is as close in style and production to Marshawn Lynch as Carroll’s had since Beast Mode was shaking SoDo and playing in Super Bowls for the Seahawks a half-dozen and more years ago.
“Yeah, yeah,” Carroll said, agreeing Wednesday about the Carson-Lynch similarity. “I think his style is so obvious. I just love the way he does it, you know.
“I mean there’s only one Marshawn. Marshawn is one of a kind and he was an extraordinary everything. Player. Mentality. And everything that he was about. One of a kind.
“But as far as hitting the line of scrimmage and letting guys know you know who you’re playing against and leaving the message behind when (Carson) hits you—the creativity. His hand-eye coordination, beautiful catching ability, all that kind of stuff.
“He’s what we’re looking for.”
So what Carroll said Wednesday about Carson’s contract ending in a few weeks was interesting. And it was different.
It was different from the coach’s tone about Carson for the last four years. Through all the injuries that have shortened every one of his four NFL seasons so far, Carson has remained Carroll’s guy. He’s been a foundation player for the way Carroll wants to play and the attitude he wants to project.
Now, in the last week of the last year of Carson’s contract, Carroll made it clear his lead running backer could be leaving in free agency in March.
Carson wanted a new Seahawks contract by now. In September, he expressed surprise and some disappointment his team hadn’t talked to him yet about a new deal.
“I mean, of course that’s something that’s in my head, on my mind. You see a lot of guys that are starting to get paid,” Carson said Sept. 1. “You see somebody get paid, your phone blows up. Everybody’s up in you like, ‘Oh, did you see so and so got paid, blah, blah, blah.’
“Like I said, man, I just try not to focus on it.”
Wednesday, Carroll acknowledged Carson has earned the right to shop elsewhere for the money he wants, at a position with the shortest shelf-life in the NFL.
“I think Chris is really one of us and he’s fit into the program great,” Carroll said. “What he said, I think he obviously means.
“But I do know Chris has got to—he’s got to look out for himself. So he’s got see what the situation is.”
Carroll added: “But we would love for him to be with us. He’s been a terrific part of our team, and hopefully we can, you know, we can keep that going.”
Carroll said “in my mind”—which is certifiably always positive—“I can’t imagine anything else happening.
“But from the business side of it,” the coach said, “you know, he’s got a chance to see what’s going on.
“And so it will hopefully we’ll be able to figure it out and keep him.”
That was definitely less than a pronouncement of “Chris is a Seahawk for life, forget about it.”
Carson’s been ‘The Man’
Carson’s been Seattle’s lead back since the first game of his rookie season of 2017. He gained 2,381 yards with 16 rushing touchdowns total in the 2018 and ‘19 seasons, despite more injuries. Carson entered 2020 coming off back-to-back 1,000-yard rushing seasons. He was the sixth rusher in Seahawks’ history to do that, after Curt Warner (1985-86), Chris Warren (1992-95), Ricky Watters (1998-2000), Shaun Alexander (2001-05) and Lynch (2011-14).
Carson’s 1,151 yards in 2018 made him Seattle’s first 1,000-yard rusher since Lynch in 2014.
But this season has been like 2017 (four games played, then a broken leg and season-ending surgery, 2018 (missed two games and also played through an injured hip and groin) and last year (which ended in December with a cracked and displaced hip).
In week three of 2020 he sprained his knee. Dallas defensive tackle Trysten Hill did a hated “gator-roll” move on Carson while on the ground at the end of a tackle. He played through the sprained knee the following week at Miami, but left the Seahawks’ win over the Dolphins in the first half to get evaluated for a concussion. He returned to finish that game, his best of the season (16 rushes, 80 yards, two touchdowns).
In October Carson sprained his foot during the first half of Seattle’s overtime loss at Arizona. He missed the next four games. The offense became imbalanced far too much to the pass, and Russell Wilson began getting sacked and committing turnovers. The Seahawks went from their first 5-0 start in team history with Carson to losing three of their next four without him.
He’s returned to play the last five games. But he has been full go for a full rushing load only in the last three. The Seahawks have won all three of those games to clinch their first NFC West title since 2016.
Carson’s value to the offense and to Carroll in particular are obvious.
Buyer beware
But Carson plays at the position with the NFL’s highest rate of injuries. The Seahawks—and every team, even Carroll’s that has running as the basis of the offense as much as any club in the league—must proceed with caution in giving huge, long-term contracts and rich guarantees to players who may not be healthy enough to make the investment worth it.
Or do you forget Todd Gurley?
The Seahawks only have to look within their own NFC West to see the pitfalls of huge new contracts for running backs.
The Rams gave Gurley a four-year, $57 million extension in July 2018. It seemed like a sure thing. Gurley was the NFL’s reigning offensive player of the year. The 2017 and ‘18 All-Pro running back became the league’s highest-paid running back with his new contract after, like Carson, far outplaying the rookie deal he signed in 2015.
But by the end of the 2018 season, the Rams made the Super Bowl while having to preserve Gurley and his arthritic knee. Last season he had career lows in carries (223) and yards rushing (857). L.A.’s coaches again tried to preserve him and his knee. By March 2020, less than two years after they gave him the $57 million deal to become their franchise cornerstone, the Rams released Gurley, who was only 25. That saved them $10.5 million in guarantees they didn’t have to pay him this year.
The Atlanta Falcons signed Gurley this spring to a one-year deal. It guaranteed him $5.5 million — $16.45 million less than the guarantees in his last Rams deal. He has 660 yards playing 14 of Atlanta’s 15 games this season. It’s going to be his lowest rushing total for a season in his career. His 24 receptions are his fewest since his rookie year of 2015.
Ito Smith (?) replaced Gurley last week as the leading rusher for the Falcons. They are missing the playoffs again.
Carson is 44 days younger than Gurley, who also had an ACL tear coming out of the University of Georgia into the 2015 draft.
Carson has 637 yards and five touchdowns in 11 games this season. He’s going to finish it with his fewest yards and touchdowns since his rookie season that ended with that broken leg in the fourth game of his career.
The positive is he feels fresh, with not even half the carries (130) at this point than he had in 2019 (278).
“I feel fresh, regardless,” Carson said after his 16 rushes for 69 yards in last weekend’s win over the Rams. “If I get 18 (carries), 10, 25, or 30, I feel fresh.”
Carson has not had a full, injury-free season dating to his junior-college days at Butler Community College in Kansas. Those were in 2013 and ‘14. In 2012, he tore his anterior cruciate ligament in his knee during his senior season at Lilburn Parkview High School in Georgia. That changed his plans of playing football for the University of Georgia. He had a hand injury that cost him games in 2016, his final one at Oklahoma State.
The Seahawks also have number-two back Carlos Hyde ending the one-year contract he signed last spring. Rashaad Penny, the team’s first-round pick in 2018, is two games into his return after being out 12 months because of reconstructive knee surgery.
Penny, who is close with Carson—”we talk a lot about cartoons,” Penny said—is still under his rookie contract through 2021. The team has a decision to make by May: whether to guarantee next year’s salary and a new one for 2020 for Penny by picking up his fifth-year option.
By then, the Seahawks will know if Carson’s shopping elsewhere results in departure — a possibility that looks more likely.
This story was originally published December 30, 2020 at 3:02 PM with the headline "With Chris Carson contract ending, Pete Carroll hints it’s possible Carson leaves Seahawks."
