Seahawks injuries may already be affecting the season

The Seahawks have less proven depth in 2018 than in previous seasons. But Seattle is already dealing with injuries they can least afford.

The Seahawks are losing players for the preseason already. Some of these may even miss regular season games. With three of the first four games on the road, Seattle will need every good player it has on it’s roster to win.

But we already know that Rashaad Penny will be out the rest of the preseason with a broken finger that he has surgery on on Wednesday. Penny is expected to be back by week one of the regular season. But, of course, there is a chance he won’t.

Going into Penny’s rookie year, he is being counted on the share number one tailback carries with Chris Carson. In 2017, Seattle started the season with injured running backs who came back to be mostly ineffective. Hopefully when Penny returns he will be better than Thomas Rawls or Eddie Lacy were last year.

Tyler Lockett, no stranger to being injured, gave everyone a bit of a scare on Wednesday when he appeared to tweak a knee in practice. But he came back and seemed to be ok.

Doug Baldwin, of course, is already missing all the preseason with a knee issue. Maybe if these were real games then he would be playing. But they aren’t and he isn’t so we don’t really know the extent of his injury yet.

Dion Jordan who the Seahawks trust to stay healthy for no real reason hasn’t played in the preseason and will probably miss real games. Seattle may have made a bad choice in thinking Jordan could be a consistent member of its pass rush.

But maybe this is a year where Brandon Marshall returns and stays healthy and catches 80 passes. Here’s the thing, though. My hope is that Marshall would catch all those passes because he is good. Not because there is no other player healthy to take catches from Marshall. Injuries seem to already be mounting in Seattle. Let’s hope this is just a preseason issue.