Mike Davis steps in where others fear to tread

The Seahawks are banged up for today’s game against the Rams. But Mike Davis will be on the field, and his play will be a huge factor in this game.

Did I say the Seahawks are banged up? To say they’re is banged up is like saying Percy Harvin wasn’t the best fit in Seattle. It’s true, but it’s a bit of an understatement. The injury report for this week doesn’t begin to tell the story. The Seahawks have three offensive line starters on injured reserve. It’s much worse on defense, as Cliff Avril, Kam Chancellor and Richard Sherman are out as well.

This doesn’t even include players that were projected to be key role players. Guys like Malik McDowell, Dewey McDonald, C.J. Prosise and Tre Madden were all expected to impact the Seahawks success this season. Rookie running back Chris Carson was proving to be the biggest surprise of all until he went down way back in week four.

And that leads to me Mike Davis. The Seahawks running game has fallen far short of expectations in 2017. I expected the three-headed monster of Eddie Lacy, Thomas Rawls and C.J. Prosise to dominate the league. I expected them to, as Pete Carroll said, “come roaring right back at it.” The projected leaders have been a monster, alright. They’ve combined for the astounding bad total of 331 yards rushing on 130 carries. That is an abysmal 2.54 yard average.

I want to make it clear that these guys aren’t dogging it. I think Rawls just can’t get healthy. I’m not sure if Prosise will ever be healthy again. As for Lacy, he just doesn’t have the explosion he once did. Speaking of explosive… Chris Carson, in his mere four games, had 208 yards on 49 carries. That’s 4.25 yards per carry. Now I don’t have a degree in mathematics, but I’m pretty sure that’s better.

Mike Davis has been huge, and will be huge against the Rams

And now we come to the Seahawks other good running back. Much like Carson, Davis was an afterthought headed into the season. Well, even more of an afterthought. At least Carson made the active roster out of training camp. It took Carson’s injury and a whole lot of non-production to get Davis off the practice squad. Once he landed, he made a big splash.

Davis, like Carson, is an actual threat in the backfield. That’s hardly the only similarity. In his three games, Davis has averaged 12.3 attempts, the same as Carson. Davis is averaging 49 yards per game, while Carson averaged 52. No, that’s not a lot, but for 12 carries, it’s good. Lacy, Rawls and Prosise combined average per game is just 37 yards. Yes, combined.

And like Carson, Davis attacks the field. He appears to take every attempted tackle as an insult to his mother’s honor. I mean, look at this:

https://twitter.com/proverbsfour23/status/940259848691658752

That looks pretty scary to me. Hey, you know who isn’t good against the run? Good guess, it’s the Los Angeles Rams! They rank 28th in yards allowed, 26th in touchdowns allowed, and 30th in average yards allowed. They’ve given up over 150 yards rushing four times, including 229 to the Washington Redskins in week two. They just gave up 78 to Jay Ajayi last week, who had, remind me… oh yeah, 35 yards against the Seahawks the week before.

I think Mike Davis is about to have his biggest game in the Seahawks biggest game of the year. If Marvel Studios ever needs to recast Daredevil, Seattle has the real-life Man Without Fear.

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