Seahawks need Ken Walker to be The Man after Rashaad Penny fracture

The Seahawks lost Rashaad Penny to a fractured tibia on Sunday. For the rest of forever, Ken Walker will likely need to be Seattle’s main back.

Let’s hear it for Seattle’s rookies, by the way! They need to be really good for the team to be successful in 2022 and, so far, the issues with the Seahawks haven’t been the play from the rookies. Have they all been great? No. But more than a couple have been very good.

Seattle chose Ken Walker (formerly known as the artist Kenneth Walker III) in the second round of the 2022 NFL draft because he has immense speed, the ability the cut quickly and good enough size to move piles a couple of yards.

He hasn’t really had the chance to show what he can do so far this year because Rashaad Penny, a former first-round choice who was finally healthy and great at the end of the 2021 season and so good he proved he should be RB1 to start 2022, has been excellent when given a chance this season.

The Seahawks will need to rely on rookie Ken Walker in the run game now

But Penny broke his tibia against the Saints in Week 5 and the likelihood he will return this year is not great. And the chances that Penny, who is on a one-year deal with the Seahawks, returns to Seattle at all probably isn’t great. He just can’t stay healthy.

But Walker may have shown in Week 5 in one run that he is everything that Seattle hoped he could be when they chose him this year. He broke through the line and had enough speed that once he was through, there was no chance anyone was going to catch him.

It was a brilliant and stunning run that not a lot of running backs are capable of. But now with Penny’s injury, Walker will simply need to do that kind of run over and over again for the foreseeable future. If he can’t, the Seahawks are going to lose a lot of games.