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Through the first half of the 2018 season Seattle Seahawks running back Chris Carson has amassed 497 yard on 111 rushing attempts in spite of missing a game and a half due to injury. Those numbers have already far exceeded the numbers of any running back in recent seasons, and give him a somewhat realistic shot at a one thousand yard season, depending on his health over the second half of the year.
It’s that last part that may be most worrisome.
In recent seasons Seahawks fans have become accustomed to seeing running backs miss time due to injury, with the team having trotted out a parade of backs. The Hawks have had 18 different running backs carry the ball over the past three and a half seasons, and that number does not include carries by fullbacks Derrick Coleman, Tre Madden or Will Tukuafu. Including those three means that Seattle fans have seen rushing attempts by 21 different players in the time since the ill-fated goal line interception in Super Bowl XLIX, and Chris Carson’s 2018 season is already one of the best seasons for any of those 21 ball carriers in that time frame.
In fact, just to put how unreliable the Seahawks running backs have been since the start of the 2015 season, here’s a list of the top fifteen seasons by a running back for the Hawks during that time period.
Seahawks RB seasons since 2015
| Season Rank | Player | Season | Attempts | Yards | Yard Per Carry | Touchdowns |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Season Rank | Player | Season | Attempts | Yards | Yard Per Carry | Touchdowns |
| 1 | Thomas Rawls | 2015 | 147 | 830 | 5.65 | 4 |
| 2 | Chris Carson | 2018 | 111 | 497 | 4.48 | 2 |
| 3 | Christine Michael | 2016 | 117 | 469 | 4.01 | 6 |
| 4 | Marshawn Lynch | 2015 | 111 | 417 | 3.76 | 3 |
| 5 | Thomas Rawls | 2016 | 109 | 349 | 3.2 | 3 |
| 6 | Mike Davis | 2018 | 67 | 288 | 4.3 | 3 |
| 7 | Mike Davis | 2017 | 68 | 240 | 3.53 | 0 |
| 8 | Chris Carson | 2017 | 49 | 208 | 4.24 | 0 |
| 9 | Christine Michael | 2015 | 39 | 192 | 4.92 | 0 |
| 10 | J.D. McKissic | 2017 | 46 | 187 | 4.07 | 1 |
| 11 | Eddie Lacy | 2017 | 69 | 179 | 2.59 | 0 |
| 12 | C.J. Prosise | 2016 | 30 | 172 | 5.73 | 1 |
| 13 | Thomas Rawls | 2017 | 58 | 157 | 2.71 | 0 |
| 14 | Rashaad Penny | 2018 | 42 | 146 | 3.48 | 0 |
| 15 | Alex Collins | 2016 | 31 | 125 | 4.03 | 1 |
Thus, if the season were to end today, Carson’s 2018 season represents the second most rushing yards by a Seattle running back since the Super Bowl loss to the New England Patriots, as his 40 yards on eight attempts against the Los Angeles Chargers on Sunday pushed his season total past that of Christine Michael’s 2016 total of 469 yards.
What is troubling, however, is that Carson has been on and off the injury report with a hip issue of some kind for the past six weeks, following his 32 carry effort against the Dallas Cowboys in Week 3. Following that Herculean effort by Carson against the Cowboys, he then missed the Week 4 game against the Arizona Cardinals, before playing against the Los Angeles Rams and Oakland Raiders heading into the bye week.
He then played against in Detroit coming out of the bye, however, his hip injury forced him out of the game against the Chargers, and he logged zero carries after the midway point of the second quarter. To me this says that he is nursing an injury that could require several weeks of recovery, as he’s already had separate weeks off, and the injury does not appear to have fully healed either time.
Obviously we will know more when the first detailed Week 10 injury report comes out later today, but for Seahawks fans who have grown wear of seeing their running backs on the injury report over the last several seasons, this seems like a case of deja vu all over again.