Seahawks’ Davis plays well Sunday while saving team money
By Lee Vowell
Seahawks running back Mike Davis once again showed on Sunday he should have been on the active roster all season. Plus, his success saves Seattle money in more ways than one. But after an injury to Davis, what’s next?
The Seahawks have a couple of decent running backs. Believe it or not. One was Chris Carson, but he is most likely done for the season. The other one is not Eddie Lacy or Thomas Rawls, but Mike Davis. Davis has been in every game he has played this season. Not great, but good.
On Sunday in Jacksonville, Davis proved he should start when healthy. Davis finished with 66 yards on 15 carries. Any time a Seattle back can get over four yards per carry, that is a huge positive. That’s like eight yards a carry on any other team. At the end of the first half, Davis ran behind Duane Brown for chunk yards.
According to Bob Condotta of the Seattle Times, “Mike was ripping, and he did a nice job with these guys and that means the guys up front did a nice job too. Russell’s yardage was helpful, but I thought Mike looked really good.”
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But like every other running back this season, and Davis once already, he got injured. In the third quarter, Davis left the game for good with a rib injury. Davis wasn’t winning the game for Seattle, but he was giving the Jaguars defense something to look for besides Russell Wilson.
Money money money
Davis’s success over the last few games also allowed the Seahawks to sit a healthy Lacy. This move saved Seattle $62,500 in an active roster bonus it would have had to pay to Lacy. Lacy has been a big disappointment this year and will not be in Seattle after 2017.
Thomas Rawls might not be active in 2018, either. He is a restricted free agent and I don’t see the point in Seattle re-signing him. This means that the Seahawks could focus on having Carson, J.D. McKissic and Davis for next year.
Carson is signed through 2020. McKissic is an exclusive-rights free agent which means the Seahawks only need to offer him a one-year league minimum contract to re-sign him. That should be considered done already. Davis will be a restricted free agent, so Seattle should keep him too.
(For the record, there is also some guy named C.J. Prosise on the roster, but no one is ever sure where he is.)
The only real question about Davis and Carson is health. Neither has shown the capability to be able to play for long stretches. Of course, neither has Lacy or Rawls.
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It isn’t fun for me to start thinking about next year already, but at least the running back group appears to be a bigger positive than they were in 2017. I will take any positive I can at this point with all these Seahawks injuries accumulating and affecting the outcomes of games.