Running Back Rankings

[RiverDog]

Well, it's not from Mike Sando, but I thought that this was an interesting one. It was done by Maurice Jones-Drew, himself a pretty fair running back in his day. Here are the 32 starting running backs ranked from first to worst according to Jones-Drew:

1. Derrick Henry, Titans
2. Jonathan Taylor, Colts
3. Nick Chubb, Browns
4. Dalvin Cook, Vikings
5. Ezekiel Elliot, Cowboys
6. Alvin Kamara, Saints
7. Joe Mixon, Bengals
8. Austin Ekeler, Chargers
9. Najee Harris, Steelers
10. Christian McCaffery, Panthers
11. Javontee Williams, Broncos
12. Aaron Jones, Packers
13. D'Andre Swift, Lions
14. David Montgomery, Bears
15. J.K. Dobbins, Ravens
16. Elijah Mitchell, 49'ers
17. Damien Harris, Patriots
18. Saquon Barkley, Giants
19. Leonard Fournette, Bucs
20. James Robinson, Jags
21. James Conner, Cards
22. Cam Akers, Rams
23. Cordarrelle Paterson, Falcons
24. Devin Singletary, Bills
25. Rashaad Penny, Seahawks
26. Antonio Gibson, Commanders
27. Clyde Edwards-Helaire
28. Josh Jacobs, Raiders
29. Raheem Mostert, Dolphins
30. Breece Hall, Jets
31. Miles Sanders, Eagles
32. Marlon Mack, Texans

https://www.nfl.com/news/ranking-all-32 ... s-at-no-10

Obviously, Jones-Drew is heavily penalizing running backs due to their injury history, otherwise guys like McCaffery (#10) and Barkley (#18) would be ranked a lot higher than they are.

Here's what he had to say about our guy:

Penny went on a tear down the stretch last season, compiling more rush touchdowns in the last five games (six) than in his entire career up to that point (five). With Chris Carson's retirement, Penny must become more consistent and prove he can carry the load -- or rookie Kenneth Walker III will chip away at the vet's opportunities.

[trents]

I wouldn't rank Elliot as high as he did. Elliot productivity has dramatically declined in the last few seasons.

[Hawktawk]

Yeah that right there . Elliot is washed up . As for Penny yeah hard to put potential and a relatively short sample any higher in a preseason ranking . About where Smjth should have been . All I can say is if Penny is healthy he’s going to be # top 5, not 25. Maybe #1 .

[RiverDog]

I wouldn't rank Elliot as high as he did. Elliot productivity has dramatically declined in the last few seasons.

I agree, I wouldn't rank Elliot that high, either.

It's quite possible that we will be one of those teams that has a "running back by committee" approach. Because of his injury history, we're not going to want to give Penny 20-25 touches a game, and since he's not a good blocker, we're likely to see a lot of Travis Homer and/or DJ Dallas on 3rd downs.

Anyhow, I thought it was an interesting ranking and good fodder for discussion here in the offseason.

[trents]

I tend to agree with his first four spots but after that there is a lot of parity. IMO, Shaquan Barkley was the most talented back in that whole list but repeated injuries and playing on a bad team prevented him from reaching his potential and now he is in decline. Leonard Fourtnette is another one like that. The health factor is so huge for that position it almost outweighs the talent factor, frankly. Will Henry ever be the same after last year's major knee injury?

[TriCitySam]

Interesting article on Penny in Athletic yesterday.

[TriCitySam]

Interesting article on Penny in Athletic yesterday.

[NorthHawk]

Interesting article on Penny in Athletic yesterday.

Yah, Penny has been snake bit with injuries, but the old saying goes 75% of any job is showing up every day. So far, Penny hasn't been able to do that.
So he's stuck at the 'Potential' phase where he has a lot of promise, and teased us with flashes, but the total results just haven't been there.

The other article discusses the DB's and it will be interesting to see how they look against the Steelers. With the emphasis this year on penalizing contact past 5 yards, rookies tend to foul much more as they get
away with it in college much more often. But Wollen and Bryant just might be longer term answers on the edges if the reports are anywhere near accurate.

So I'll be watching for Walker, DBs, and the OL on Saturday.
I hope it all goes well.

[Agent 86]

Interesting article on Penny in Athletic yesterday.

Here it is......


Rashaad Penny is Seahawks’ No. 1 RB, but keeping the title won’t be easy

By Michael-Shawn Dugar Aug 11, 2022

RENTON, Wash. — Rashaad Penny hopped off the bench and started screaming.

“All y’all motherf—ers doubted me!”

This feeling had been bubbling inside the Seahawks running back for some time. Penny began his career as a highly regarded first-round pick who had just lit up the stat sheet at San Diego State. But three years and 10 weeks into his professional career, Penny had more appearances on injured reserve than he did starts. Locally, he was widely regarded as a bust, someone who was not perceived to have value on the roster beyond the 2021 season.

Penny didn’t do much to alter this perception when he did receive his first start in Week 11 of 2021. In fact, that moment was emblematic of how his career had gone thus far: After one explosive carry for 18 yards, he came out due to injury and had just one more run the rest of the game. The talent was clearly there. The durability was not.

Then, in Weeks 14-18, Penny came to life. He made five consecutive starts and posted a league-high 671 yards and six touchdowns while averaging 7.2 yards per attempt. Not only was Penny healthy, he was arguably the best running back in football for the final month of the season.

After he put the finishing touches on a 190-yard rushing performance against the Cardinals in Week 18, Penny bounced off the visitor bench and let out that scream. It was directed at no one in particular. But, in a way, it was directed at everyone. Everyone who deemed him injury prone. Everyone who said he wasn’t worth a high draft pick. Everyone who didn’t believe in his abilities.

The clip was shared by the Seahawks’ team website days after Seattle’s 38-30 victory. Tight end Gerald Everett grabbed Penny and shared in the jubilation. “Yessssss,” Everett hollered. In a separate clip moments later, Penny hugged running backs coach Chad Morton.

“They knew I was the real deal,” Penny yelled, his voice oozing with confidence. “They knew I was the real deal.”

Penny ended his sideline exaltation by slapping hands with left guard Damien Lewis and declaring, “I been quiet way too long.”

“That was a long time coming. It was great,” running backs coach Chad Morton said during training camp. “I just let him talk his s***. It was really good to see him get fired up, and that’s what we need. Just him with that right mindset and being fired up and ready to go. You got to have a little bit of chip on your shoulder.”

Penny’s outburst was years in the making. He was at the peak of his powers for the first time in his four-year career. Entering Year 5, Penny is Seattle’s No. 1 running back for the very first time, in part because of a neck injury that forced Chris Carson to medically retire.

“He’s been great,” Morton said of the 26-year-old Penny. “He knows he’s the guy right now.”

Key words: Right now.

The Seahawks love Penny. The way he ran the ball in the final month of the season was seen as validation for their decision to stick with him through a series of injuries the first few years of his career. But that doesn’t change the fact general manager John Schneider and coach Pete Carroll made only a short-term commitment to Penny this offseason, signing him to a one-year contract worth $5.7 million. Penny is just the 16th-highest paid running back in the league this year by average annual salary. The terms of the contract suggest the front office believes Penny still has much more to prove.

Drafting Michigan State’s Ken Walker III with the 41st pick sends a similar message. Walker was one of the best running backs in college football last season. He rushed for 1,636 yards while averaging 6.2 yards per carry with 18 rushing touchdowns. He was a consensus All-American and the Big Ten’s running back of the year. Walker was also one of the first running backs Morton began scouting ahead of the draft and was elated when the pick came in on draft right.

“I was like, oh my gosh, this is it,” Morton thought to himself. “This is the guy right there.”

It was a bittersweet feeling for Morton because he knew selecting Walker was tied to the possibility that Carson may not be available this season. But he was nonetheless thrilled to have Walker in the building. Walker’s presence, the Seahawks feel, will help push Penny and ensure he’s playing at a high level similar to how he finished last season. It’s Penny’s backfield for the time being but there’s value in having the reigning Doak Walker Award winner right on his heels.

“He’s still got to go because he’s got another young buck on his back,” Morton said. “You can’t settle in thinking, ‘OK, I got this now that Chris is not here.’ You got this young hungry back that can run, now. He’s going to be out there chasing him down. I know Ken’s attitude and he’s going to try to take the job from Rashaad. He wants to play, too.”

And he will. Walker has taken plenty of snaps with the first-team offense during camp and is listed directly behind Penny on the team’s first unofficial depth chart of the preseason, ahead of veterans DeeJay Dallas and Travis Homer. Walker has also been involved in the passing game at practice. It’s unclear whether Penny will play in the preseason — he played in two of the three games last year — but even if he’s the starter in those contests, Walker will have plenty of reps to prove he’s also worthy of that starting job. The Seahawks’ first preseason game is Saturday at Pittsburgh.

“It’s just all about competition around here,” Morton said. “Otherwise, Rashaad would not be his best unless he had Kenny pushing him like that.”

Penny has additional motivations beyond Walker’s presence. He spent years as an oft-injured, underwhelming first-round pick in the age of social media. It didn’t take much scrolling on his phone to find unkind words from fans about his play and his lack of availability. There were times those words bothered Penny. It was even harder to deal with because although Penny felt it was unfair to label him injury prone — “I just had strains from my knee, that’s different,” he says — the reality was that he couldn’t do anything to dissuade anyone from using the term while he was on the sideline.

“The hard part was just me getting to play on Sundays,” Penny said. “That was really the most difficult thing for me and now that I’m feeling healthy and feeling at my best, I can’t wait to actually take off this year.”

This was a rare healthy offseason for Penny, who worked to maintain his ideal playing weight of 237 pounds. He trained in Southern California with an emphasis on sand work. He felt like training in the sand helped stabilize his knee.

“I was able to do a lot of things that I wasn’t able to do a few years ago after the knee surgery,” he said. “It made me quicker off my feet, bouncier, and made me do some things, so I think that was very important, me just staying at it.”

As for his mindset, Penny immediately brushed off a question about the feeling of entering the season as the team’s No. 1 running back.

“I don’t think like that,” Penny said. “I have a lot of things to prove to myself. I still have to be healthy. … I have a big chip on my shoulder this year.”

A healthy, motivated Penny goes a long way toward helping the Seahawks achieve their offensive goals this season. The Seahawks have two quarterbacks in Geno Smith and Drew Lock who have yet to prove they can consistently be the reason their teams win football games. But Carroll doesn’t feel his quarterback needs to be the team’s engine that way; he believes his offense is at its best when it first establishes a presence in the run game.

“I really think Rashaad’s influence in the end of the season really made a difference in our guys,” Carroll said Tuesday. “I think they’ve really taken to how we run the football. The confidence, reading things the way we want to read them has really gone across the board.”

As teams deploy split-safety defenses to thwart explosive passing plays, Carroll sees value in having a dominant run game to lessen the quarterback’s burden, protect the football and force teams to add another defender into the tackle box, which often means switching to a single-high safety look. Against those single-high looks with one-on-one opportunities on the outside, Seattle feels it has the weapons in the passing game to be explosive. But that’s much harder to accomplish, the team believes, without first making defenses respect the threat of being gashed on the ground. And that starts with Penny.

“We’re still trying to throw the ball,” Morton said. “I don’t want people thinking we’re not trying to do that. We still got to score some points. We’re going to start it with the ground game and with our attitude, set the tempo and be ready to go.”

[Aseahawkfan]

The running game and O-line are just giant question marks with high end potential.

[RiverDog]

Thanks, 86! That was a good read.

[Hawktawk]

Yeah nice read . And from the sounds of Walker he will push to start as well. You give Pete Carroll a pounding run game he will win a lot of games.

[RiverDog]

Yeah nice read . And from the sounds of Walker he will push to start as well. You give Pete Carroll a pounding run game he will win a lot of games.

Pete will win a lot of games with a pounding run game AND a top 5 defense. If he doesn't have the defense, the run game will be pounding sand.

[Aseahawkfan]

Pete will win a lot of games with a pounding run game AND a top 5 defense. If he doesn't have the defense, the run game will be pounding sand.

No run game the defense will stay on the field forever, get worn out, and get pounded down. It's not just a running back that is needed for a good run game, but a viable passing attack to making opposing defenses cover the pass and an O-line that can run block well. Those are giant question marks for us given even Cross is known for pass blocking, but not run blocking. Run blocking is a much different mentality and level of physicality, especially at the NFL level where even the LBs are big, strong, and fast.

[RiverDog]

Pete will win a lot of games with a pounding run game AND a top 5 defense. If he doesn't have the defense, the run game will be pounding sand.

No run game the defense will stay on the field forever, get worn out, and get pounded down. It's not just a running back that is needed for a good run game, but a viable passing attack to making opposing defenses cover the pass and an O-line that can run block well. Those are giant question marks for us given even Cross is known for pass blocking, but not run blocking. Run blocking is a much different mentality and level of physicality, especially at the NFL level where even the LBs are big, strong, and fast.

I agree, but my point was what allowed Pete to win a lot of games with 'a pounding run game' was the Legion of Boom. If you don't have a top 5 defense to keep opponent scoring low, then a run game doesn't do you a lot of good. If a defense allows an opponent to go up by 2-3 scores, then the offense is forced to throw the ball.

If this new defensive scheme of ours works, the absolutely I can see Pete returning 'home' and running the ball 50+% of the time. But it's all dependent on the defense.

[NorthHawk]

He went away from the aggressive Offense when the Defense was giving up record yards and needed the Offense to produce at a rate much higher than previous Pete Carroll Offenses.
It's just his style.
However, in that style of Offense where you keep it close, what's required is a QB who can make a difference and win games for you with a furious comeback. Wilson could do that, but
it's unknown if Lock or Geno can. We saw in previous years that the Offense could be stymied and never get in gear all game long to the point where even getting a couple of first downs
would win games but we couldn't pull it off. That's the danger of not letting the Offense get on track - they sometimes never do in the game, so to add to your point the Defense needs
to be much better than average. If only to make up for a limited production Offense.

[Hawktawk]

The last I checked we had the second most wins in the decade including 12 wins a short year ago . Last I checked the Lob was washed up by 2017. That was the low point . But Pete is always going to feature a run to pass offense unless we we have the next Peyton manning . Russ was great but he’s not 4 wide call your plays at the line bombs away good . Especially now . Just a hunch but i think the defense will be much better and will benefit from an offense that runs well , takes the check downs , throws between the hashes and move the chains . Everyone who thinks Pete stunted Russels potential I guess let’s tune in on the 12th and see how he and his little buddy boy Hackett dud with that .

We will run . We will pass . It will be a lot better than you all expect

[NorthHawk]

Last I checked the Lob was washed up by 2017. That was the low point .

The LoB was gone by then, but the worst stretch of Defense was the first 5 games of 2020 when we were on record pace for ineptitude. The worst ever in the history of the NFL.
Pete then panicked and gave up the farm for Adams who he used as a pass rusher because he thought that Irving and Mayowa were starting DE's. This after stating that the pass
rush was a priority for 2 previous years - and then bypassing pass rushers in the draft. The traded for Dunlap who steadied the DL for that year.

However, after the Offense won the first 5 games - and it was mostly Wilson doing the damage, at the first sign of trouble on Offense, they weren't given the benefit of the doubt
and Pete reined them in to his moribund style of predictable plays and low key Offense. Until the 4th quarter when he handed the ball to Wilson and told him to go win the game.

You seem to base your optimism on hunches. Good for you I suppose, but it means your opinions have little basis in facts.

[RiverDog]

The last I checked we had the second most wins in the decade including 12 wins a short year ago . Last I checked the Lob was washed up by 2017. That was the low point . But Pete is always going to feature a run to pass offense unless we we have the next Peyton manning . Russ was great but he’s not 4 wide call your plays at the line bombs away good . Especially now . Just a hunch but i think the defense will be much better and will benefit from an offense that runs well , takes the check downs , throws between the hashes and move the chains . Everyone who thinks Pete stunted Russels potential I guess let’s tune in on the 12th and see how he and his little buddy boy Hackett dud with that .

We will run . We will pass . It will be a lot better than you all expect

The low point is now. For the past two seasons, we've had the 2nd worst passing defense in the league, ranked 31st in both 2020 and 2021, and the year before that, we were ranked 27th in pass D. Overall, in 2021, we had the 28th ranked defense. It doesn't get much worse than that and has progressively declined ever since the LOB, which is one of the reasons why I was calling for Pete's head last December. Unless that improves dramatically, even if we had the capability, we're not going to be able to ground and pound. We're going to have to depend on the quarterback to keep us in games.

[Aseahawkfan]

We haven't replenished the CBs yet. Hopefully this new group of CBs can cover and stay healthy. Secondary issues are as bad as the D-line issues and both those units are essential to pass defense and they work together with pressure and coverage supporting each unit when defending the pass. Huge question marks in the secondary and on the D-line. We'll see if the new 3-4 scheme allows for more pressure and better use of talent. It still won't matter if the CBs and Safeties can't stay healthy and cover.

[Hawktawk]

I like the sounds of our corners so far if they can stay on the field .