Chris Carson having season-ending neck surgery. Seahawks think he can play next year
This is why Chris Carson was trying to get every guaranteed dollar he could upon his contract ending last year.
In the cold business of the NFL, this is why the Seahawks did not want to give him all he sought.
Carson is having neck surgery that will end his 2021 season and puts his career in some doubt.
Coach Pete Carroll said Friday the Seahawks believe the cervical surgery now to fix an issue in a vertebrae in the bullish Carson’s neck will allow their 27-year-old leading rusher to return to play for them next season; 2022 is the final year of his $10-plus-million contract.
But a neck and vertebrae issue obviously makes nothing about Carson’s football future guaranteed.
Carson briefly shopped in free agency this past spring but found the running-back market cratered on him. That was partly because of the nature of the NFL’s most-injured position with the shortest career lengths, and it was because Carson has yet to play a full season injury-free since junior college.
He ultimately returned to the Seahawks on a two-year contract worth $10,425,000. He received $5.5 million guaranteed for 2021, less than he had been seeking since the summer of 2020 when coming off seasons with 1,151 yards and 1,230 yards rushing in 2018 and ‘19, respectively.
Carson earned little of the up to $6.9 million he could have received in incentive bonuses in this first year of his two-year contract.
“Chris is going to have season-ending surgery, so that he can get ready to play for next season,” Carroll said following practice for the NFC West game Sunday between the last-place Seahawks (3-6) and the first-place Arizona Cardinals (8-2) at Lumen Field.
“We went as long as we could, and he worked as hard as he could at it. This is just, after not being able to get it to happen and turn around, this is the best choice we’ve got.
“We’ll look forward to him getting all that taken care of and then be ready for a big year next year.”
Asked what the level of confidence is from the team that Carson will be able to continue playing in 2022, Carroll said: “every bit of it that he will.
“That’s the whole reason that we are doing it now, and he is all for it,” the coach said. “He just couldn’t shake it, couldn’t shake it. Tried like crazy to get it done, but this is so he can play next year.”
‘A spot’ in his neck
Carroll said the injury is a “spot” issue on a vertebrae in Carson’s neck.
“It’s a wear-and-tear thing,” Carroll said, mentioning how fiendishly Carson lifts weights, in addition to his punishing running style.
“For what it is, there is just a spot in one of the verts that is a rough spot, and it is irritating the nerve,” Carroll said.
“He’s an avid, avid weightlifter and he put a ton of weight on his shoulders. Who knows? It could have come from anywhere.
“It’s a wear-and-tear thing that developed. He had not had signs of it in the past.”
Carson has daringly hurdled defenders in the open field while carrying the ball in past seasons, sometimes tumbling to the ground upon hard landings. He has said his mother has implored him to not do that in games.
During a Seahawks win at Carolina in 2018, Carson hurdled Panthers defensive back Eric Reid and Reid clipped Carson’s lower leg. That caused Carson to go heels over head. Yet he landed on both feet, like a cat falling from upside down from a tree. He kept running, too, to finish off maybe the most incredible 15-yard run any Seahawk had ever seen.
Dina Rowe was not amused. Carson said his mother (Rowe) texted him after the game about his leap, flip, land-on-his-feet-and-continue running trick. She had a stern message.
“Stay on the ground,” Carson said Mom told him. “You give me a heart attack.”
Carroll has called Carson’s neck injury a “long-term condition.” But the coach said Friday Carson did not have this discomfort in his neck in previous years.
Carroll said Carson’s is not like the neck injuries that ended the careers of Seahawks Super Bowl champions Kam Chancellor and Cliff Avril in the 2017 season.
“It’s different. Not the same situation. Each one of those guys had their own, unique situation, as well,” Carroll said.
“And this is uniquely different.”
That’s what gives the Seahawks the belief Carson can play again.
Long process
Carson last played Oct. 3 in Seattle’s win at San Francisco. He finished this season with 252 yards on 54 carries and three touchdowns in four games played. His season high in rushing was 91 yards on 16 carries in the Seahawks’ opening win at Indianapolis Sept. 12.
That’s the last time new coordinator Shane Waldron’s offense has been as fast-paced and varied as designed.
The team designated him to return off injured reserve last week to practice. He did, on Wednesday and Thursday before the Seahawks lost 17-0 at Green Bay last weekend. Carson’s neck discomfort did not get better after those two practices, and the Seahawks decided then to shut down any attempts at him returning to play.
“We took as much time as we could to rest him, and built him up to bring him back,” Carroll said. “And when he came back to practice, the first day, it wasn’t quite right. He practiced again the next day. It just didn’t relent.
“It’s been real uncomfortable for him. It’s been physically uncomfortable for him. And so the indications were real strong that we needed to do something...
“When it didn’t and didn’t and didn’t, it was a pretty clear-cut case.”
Carroll said Carson’s relentlessly competitive nature is “precisely” why this process to decide whether to have surgery and end his 2021 nine games into the season has taken six weeks.
“He is such a battler and competitor. He’s so tough that he just kept wanting to take another shot at it and keep waiting and seeing if we can win it. And we couldn’t,” Carroll said.
“So this will be a real positive thing that will happen. Had he made it through the season that (surgery) would have been considered, anyway. So he will have more time to get another couple months on it here, and get a jump on it.”
Alex Collins will remain the lead back replacing Carson. He is also banged up, playing through a groin issue that has sidelined him in practices but not games. Collins was not on the injury report the Seahawks submitted to the NFL Friday for their game against the Cardinals Sunday.
Carroll hired Waldron from the run-based Rams in January to coordinate the offense with a more basis on Carson’s running. Without Carson, the run has been only in fits and spurts — and not good enough or long enough ones.
Seattle is 30th in the NFL in rushing offense. Despite Collins averaging more than 4 yards per carry Seattle had its running backs carry just 11 times in 59 plays in Green Bay. The Seahawks’ 17-0 loss that was a 3-0 game into the fourth quarter.
Number-two back Rashaad Penny, the team’s first-round draft choice in 2018, was active for the Packers game but did not play a down.
Waldron said this week he has to be better calling more running plays more consistently.
“I’m always going to keep coming back to avoiding those negative plays, doing a better job on third down so that we can get those runs going,” Waldron said. “And I need to do a great job of sticking in the run game in those early game situations where we can come out with that balance, especially in the first half of the game.”
He won’t have Carson to give the ball to the rest of this season.
This is the second time in his five NFL seasons Carson has sustained a season-ending injury after playing in just four games. He broke his ankle early in his rookie season of 2017.
That was the year Carroll made him Seattle’s overlooked seventh-round draft choice from Oklahoma State and Butler Community College in El Dorado, Kansas.
“Chris has been one of my favorite guys around here for a long time, since we found him, drafted him, and all of the toughness and style that he brought to us,” Carroll said. “He will always be one of my favorite guys and looking up there at the big 32. There’s something about the way he carried it.
“We obviously have missed him all season. We have to take care of him and get him right.”
This story was originally published November 19, 2021 at 2:21 PM with the headline "Chris Carson having season-ending neck surgery. Seahawks think he can play next year."
