Summer Sleeper: Seattle Seahawks

Ken Kelly

In our annual 32-part Summer Sleeper series, DLF scribes identify a lightly-touted player on each NFL roster who may be worthy of your consideration. Our subjects all have varying levels of “sleeperness,” but each merits a bit of in-depth discussion here in the Premium Content section.

To help everybody along, we are going to be categorizing our sleepers under one of three headings:

Super Deep Sleepers – Players who aren’t roster-worthy in 12-team leagues, but are still worth keeping an eye on.
Deep Sleepers – An end of the roster player who is more often than not on the waiver wire in 12-team leagues.
Sleeper – A likely rostered player who makes for a good trade target. Their startup ADP puts them out of the top-175 or so.

Because we aren’t going give you the likes of mainstream sleepers, most of these players will undoubtedly fizzle. All we are asking is for you to keep an open mind and perhaps be willing to make room for one of these players on your bench. You never know when the next Adam Thielen is going to spring up. Feel free to add your own thoughts about our choice for the designated sleeper, or nominate one of your own in the comments below.

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Chris Carson, RB SEA
Category: Super Deep Sleeper

The Seattle Seahawks have long been known for two things – defensive production and running the football with vigor and authority. Pete Carroll loves to play smashmouth football on both sides of the ball and it’s served him well in college and the NFL as he’s won at the highest level coaching in both.

The Seahawks enter 2017 with a running back depth chart featuring the newly signed Eddie Lacy, Thomas Rawls, Alex Collins and CJ Prosise, among others. On the surface, that looks like a pretty talented group of players without much room for another spot on the regular season depth chart. However, when you look closer, it reveals some serious deficiencies and possibly a longer-term opportunity for someone to take advantage of.

Lacy is on a one-year contract worth $5.55 million with only $3 million guaranteed. He’ll be a free agent at the end of the season and is no sure bet to re-sign with the Seahawks, regardless of how good or bad his season ends up being. At this point, he’s having a hard time beating out Rawls to be the primary running back and that, in itself, seems to be a red flag for a player many thought would just walk in and be handed the job if he proved to be healthy again and kept his weight down, which he has thus far.

Thomas Rawls lit up the fantasy world in 2015 as he rushed for 830 yards on just 147 carries (good for a 5.6 yards per carry average). However, a leg injury at the end of the season lingered into last year and Rawls was one of fantasy football’s greatest disappointments in 2016 as he posted just 349 yards on 109 carries (an average of only 3.2 yards per carry) and scored just three touchdowns during the course of the year. Rawls is said to be completely healthy this off-season and is rumored to be holding Lacy off as the RB1 for Seattle. However, it remains to be seen if he can stay injury-free as he’s only played 23 games in two years and never carried the ball more than 150 times in a season. He also didn’t look like the same player last year when he was on the field. If he’s truly 100% and back to his 2015 form, Rawls may actually be the sleeper in Seattle (sounds like a movie) but that remains to be seen.

CJ Prosise is a talented running back who should thrive in a pass catching role for the Seahawks this year but he’s also coming off an injury and his durability is in question. There’s little doubting his dynamic ability but we simply haven’t seen enough of him to know if he can be anything more than a third down back in the NFL. In short, Prosise is a very talented but very unproven player with question marks of his own.

Collins is a bruiser of a running back but proved to be pretty limited athletically as a rookie. It’s quite possible the league is just too filled with dynamic athletes for Collins’ limited athleticism and skill set to be overly effective.

Enter Chris Carson.

Carson isn’t going to blow anyone away with his stats from college. In fact, he only carried the ball a total of 213 times for 1,076 yards in two years at Oklahoma State (he started by going the JUCO route after committing to Georgia and subsequently tearing his ACL) and fell all the way to third on the depth chart in Stillwater last season.

So, why the fuss?

Carson’s combine measurables were great. In fact, his 4.58 40, 37-inch vertical and 10’10” broad jump raised a lot of eyebrows. The mold of a Seahawks running back is tough and powerful. Carson is 5’11 and just 218 pounds. However, he squats over 600 pounds on a regular basis and is said to spend every waking hour he can in the gym working out – it shows when you see him in or out of pads as he simply looks chiseled. His combine performance and limited game tape had Pete Carroll labeling him as one of his favorite players in the entire draft. For a Coach who really does open up every position to competition and personally pushed to draft Carson in the draft’s final round instead of risk losing him as an UDFA, that’s truly noteworthy.

Here’s a glimpse at what the Seahawks may have seen in their evaluation of his game tape and Pro Day to get them excited about Carson:

Chris Carson is quickly gaining the attention of the Seahawks beat writers and generating excitement throughout camp. While he’s going to have to really be impressive in preseason games to make the team, he’s already garnering a lot of attention from his teammates and coaches as a player who has really surprised just about everyone in camp. Everyone outside of Carroll, who seemed to know something everyone else didn’t, that is.

When you really evaluate the tape, you simply see player who looks explosive, strong and natural as a runner. The Seahawks don’t need players who like to bounce every run to the outside and it seems Carson has really embraced the “power back” mentality.

While making this roster may seem like a long shot on paper, remember this is a team that doesn’t just talk about competition, they embrace it. Remember, Tarvaris Jackson was once thought to be the quarterback of the future and someone named Russell Wilson simply outplayed him in camp, took the job and never looked back. If Carson continues to be impressive throughout the preseason, he’ll easily knock other depth backs like Mike Davis right off the roster. If he’s really impressive, he’ll knock Alex Collins to the curb. If he’s really, really impressive and makes the team, all bets are off as he’d likely be one injury away from true dynasty league relevance.

There are lots of players to be excited to watch this preseason and Carson is at right at the top of my list.

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ken kelly