Seattle Seahawks: 15 best running backs in franchise history
Number 9: The first Seahawks running back was one of their best
The Seahawks hit the jackpot with their third draft pick ever when they selected their first running back, Sherman Smith. At 6’4″ and 225 pounds, he had been a solid player at Miami of Ohio but certainly didn’t compile the stats of a Ricky Bell, whose 1,957 yards nearly doubled Smith’s 1,002. Chuck Muncie of Cal was thought to be the top back in the 1976 draft and was the first one taken.
Yet when you compare their professional careers, Smith ran neck and neck with Muncie for their first four seasons. Tell me which stat line is Muncie’s, and which belongs to Smith. No cheating!
ATT YDS AVG TD RCP YDS TD
641 2,880 4.49 25 142 1,668 8
748 3,225 4.31 26 118 1,061 1
Our man Sherman Smith is the first man listed. Muncie played in 55 games in his first four seasons with 48 starts. Smith saw action in 54 games with 50 starts in his first four years. Smith split his carries with two of the players I’ve already mentioned, first Sims then Doornink. While he didn’t suffer quite the same fate as David Sims, Smith saw his career derailed by injury as well.
While Sims suffered a neck injury in the third game of his third season, Smith made it into his fifth year in the league before an injury ended his 1980 season. Like Sims, Smith got hurt in the third game, although in his case it was a knee injury instead of his neck. Without their lead back, the Seahawks saw their record plummet from 9-7 to 4-12. When he came back in 1981, number 47 was confident that he would pick his game up as if he’d never missed a down.
Despite his confidence in his knee, Smith never did fully recover. While he did play in all 16 games, he only started eight. His ability to cut just wasn’t the same. While he had averaged nearly 4.5 yards per carry before the injury, he only averaged 3.0 yards in his first season back, and only got the ball 83 times. In 1982 he only played in nine games, and his carries dropped to 63. He wrapped up his career with a final season in San Diego, hanging up his cleats after just 24 carries. As with so many of the Hawks ball carriers, injuries cut short a career that started as one of the brightest.