Seahawks: Christine Michael to start over Thomas Rawls against Miami

According to the depth chart pushing by the Seattle Seahawks, Christine Michael will start at running back against the Miami Dolphins.

The Seattle Seahawks released their “official” depth chart today, and it contained some interesting revelations. The biggest one was perhaps at RB, where Thomas Rawls has not yet regained his job at the starter.

Instead, he’ll start on the bench. Christine Michael is set to get the bulk of the carries against the Dolphins. Rawls will get a few snaps, but the running game will belong to Michael this week.

None of this should come as much of a surprise though. Rawls only played three snaps in the preseason. He had only two carries. The Seahawks have eased him back slowly from his ankle injury last season. There’s no reason for them to suddenly rush him now.

It helps that Christine Michael had his “awakening.” After 3 years of not being able to count on the uber-athletic talent, he’s become a reliable assets that the Seahawks can depend on.

There is a bit of irony in Michael getting the start over Rawls. It was Rawls passing him on the depth chart that made Michael expendable a year ago. The Seahawks then shipped Michael off to Dallas for a draft pick. He’s only back now because Rawls broke his ankle.

As for Rawls, he should be back as the starter in a couple of weeks. It is reasonable to expect him to get 8-10 touches on Sunday. That’ll almost certainly increase to 15 the following week, and then around 20 for Week 3.

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As long as Michael plays well over that span of games, we’ll probably see a time-share once Rawls is back to full strength. Both backs will get carries early in games, and then the team will ride the hot hand after that point.

Th fantasy implications of that system is messy, but that’s a topic for another article.