Seattle Seahawks: The Evolution of Thomas Rawls
By Keith Myers
The Seattle Seahawks have one of the top young RBs in the entire NFL in Thomas Rawls, and watching him evolve was one of the best storylines of the 2015 season.
If you’re a regular reader of 12th Man Rising, than there are two things about me (and Thomas Rawls) that you already know:
- I was the LAST person to get on board with him being a good player.
- I am now one of his biggest fans, and am now proudly driving the hype train.
Why the change? Quite frankly, because he changed. Though perhaps it might be more accurate to include that the team changed as well.
Early in training camp Rawls was completely lost. He’d run into tackles instead of cutting through holes. He’d stumble through his breaks. He put the ball on the ground way too much. He often looked like he was running with weights around his ankles.
Basically, he looked like a guy that didn’t belong in the NFL. The preseason didn’t help much either. There were some good runs, and the weights from his ankles were finally gone, but the poor vision remained. He also went down far too often with a simple arm tackle.
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When Rawls took over for an injured Lynch in Week 3 and led Seattle to their first victory of the season, he looked like a completely different back. He was quick and decisive, rarely making the bad decisions that plagued him before. He still didn’t break tackles, but he was now falling forward and gaining an extra yard or two on almost every run.
The difference was remarkable, and he only got better from there. As he gained confidence, the broken tackles started coming in bunches. Rawls ended up leading the entire NFL in yards per run and yards per run after contact.
Part of the reason for Rawls’ success was that the offense changed to fit his strengths. The Seahawks opened up their playbook and adapted, rather than continuing to run the plays that built around Lynch.
Lynch was tremendous between the tackles, which is why the team ran inside-zone so often when he was in the game. He lacked the speed to be great on zone-stretch plays, so the team only used them rarely.
Turns out Rawls was a bit of the opposite. He excelled at the zone-stretch game like no RB the Seahawks have had in the Pete Carroll era. Asking Rawls to run inside-zone negates his biggest strength, his acceleration.
Seattle’s ability to adapt to their talent has been a defining characteristic of the Seahawks under Carroll. The shift in game planning emphasis when Rawls took over was subtle but massively important.
Obviously, I was way too hard on Rawls early on. Lynch didn’t look great in Seattle’s offense in 2010 and early in 2011. The zone-running game isn’t easy to learn. Rawls was clearly struggling to learn his reads.
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It also didn’t help that the team was making him a square peg in a round hole by having him run plays designed on Marshawn’s skill set. By letting Rawls be Rawls, they put him in a better position to succeed, and he took that opportunity and ran with it (pun intended).
If Rawls follows the production arc of most RBs in their 2nd season in a zone running game, 2016 is going to amazing to watch. I don’t know about you, but I cannot wait to watch that happen.