Round 2: Seahawks draft UCLA’s Zach Charbonnet, get depth for running back Kenneth Walker

Rashaad Penny’s gone. Players seem to get hurt at the position more than they play.

Kenneth Walker needed a running back to play behind him after his rookie 1,000-yard rushing season in 2022.

The Seahawks addressed those issues by selecting UCLA running back Zach Charbonnet with their second of two choices in the second round of the NFL draft. Charbonnet was the 52nd-overall pick in the draft.

“Just a physical running style. Downhill, one-cutting,” Charbonnet said on the telephone Friday night from his family home in Thousand Oaks, when asked what kind of back the Seahawks are getting.

He is the ninth running back coach Pete Carroll and general manager John Schneider have drafted in the last eight years. Walker, from Michigan State, was Seattle’s second-round pick last year.

Charbonnet, from Oaks Christian High School in Thousand Oaks, California, rushed for 1,137 yards and 1,359 yards the last two seasons for UCLA, with 27 total rushing touchdowns.

He led the Pac-12 with seven 100-yard rushing games in 2021 and was second in average rushing yards per game (94.75). That was the season after he transferred from Michigan. That was because he wanted to be back closer to his family.

“Especially during that time, battling COVID those years...I wanted to come back home,” he said.

He’s known for his upright running style, consistent production and ability to catch passes out of the backfield and pass block at UCLA.

“Just catching the ball out of the backfield is something that I massively improved from my junior to my senior year,” Charbonnet said.

Third-down roles are also up for grabs in the thin running-back position group with Seattle.

“It’s all about competition. I know the kind of person I’m going to bring to this team.,” Charbonnet said. “They are going to get a physical person...

“Definitely, my mentality is what they are going to get.”

This story was originally published April 28, 2023 at 5:49 PM with the headline "Round 2: Seahawks draft UCLA’s Zach Charbonnet, get depth for running back Kenneth Walker."

Gregg Bell

The News Tribune

Gregg Bell is the Seahawks and NFL writer for The News Tribune. He is a two-time Washington state sportswriter of the year, voted by the National Sports Media Association in January 2023 and January 2019. He started covering the NFL in 2002 as the Oakland Raiders beat writer for The Sacramento Bee. The Ohio native began covering the Seahawks in their first Super Bowl season of 2005. In a prior life he graduated from West Point and served as a tactical intelligence officer in the U.S. Army, so he may ask you to drop and give him 10. Support my work with a digital subscription