Seattle Seahawks: 15 best running backs in franchise history

The Seattle Seahawks have been known as one of the NFL’s most run-oriented teams throughout their existence. Here are the fifteen best running backs in their history.

It should be no surprise that the Seahawks have produced some of the running backs ever. They are one of the few teams in the NFL which still emphasize the run, in fact. There are a couple of names I just can’t include in the Hawks top fifteen. One is fifth among the NFL’s all-time leaders, and the other is fifth on the Seahawks all-time rushing list. Yet I’m leaving both of them out.

The more studious 12s knew this was coming: the only problem with the latter player is that he’s a quarterback. That’s right, Russell Wilson ran for 4,689 yards in College Navy, Wolf Gray, and Action Green. Wilson ranks seventh in rushing touchdowns for the Seahawks with 23. More impressive that his 5.5 yards per carry average is second among all Hawks with at least 100 attempts. But, he’s not a running back, so let’s move on.

Seahawks have had some of the league’s greatest running backs ever

One rather glaring, surprising, and even a bit embarrassing fact is that Seattle hasn’t produced a lot of the NFL’s top career rushers. It’s true that a former Seahawks player is actually in the league’s top five running backs of all time. It’s also true that he only took the field in one game for Seattle. Yes, I’m talking about Adrian Peterson. Of his spectacular 14,918 yards and 120 touchdowns, just 16 of those yards and a single touchdown came for Seattle. I can’t exactly say he was one of the Hawks best 15 running backs.

Let’s get back to the running backs that we can legitimately claim as our own. A quick note here: I fully expect that when I revisit this in 10 years, Kenneth Walker III will be very near the top. Alright, back to Hawks history. The first back Seattle can reasonably claim as a Seahawks player is 24th on the league’s list of top running backs. This is a good time to clarify that this list is sorted by total career yards. Happily, I am not so constrained, as you’ll see.

Initially, I was going to get a little mathy with my list. Fear not, mathphobes, it was just a little mathy, and it was simple, like me. The Seahawks have had several great running backs that spent part of their career with other teams. I didn’t discount the rest of their careers, but I’m primarily concerned with what they did for our beloved Hawks. At first, I planned to credit those players with just 10 percent of their stats outside of their Seahawks. In practice, that still resulted in some ridiculous inclusions.

Going back to Adrian Peterson, I’d have added 1,491 yards and 12 touchdowns to his career totals. To clarify, that’s10 percent of his 14,918 yards and 119 scores outside of Seattle. Just going by statistics, that would place him ahead of Thomas Rawls and Dan Doornink, right behind Rashaad Penny. Frankly, that struck me as stupid. I mean, stupid even for me. So I scrapped that idea and just went with a more common-sense approach. No matter what he did in his other 183 games, I can’t say AP was one of the Hawks best running backs ever based on one game. So let’s get to the players that did make the cut.