Rashaad Penny out for rest of Seahawks season. C.J. Prosise, Travis Homer up next
The Seahawks will be without Rashaad Penny the rest of this season.
Their running game for the final three regular-season games then playoffs is down to lead back Chris Carson, a pass-catching third-down back and a rookie whose only career rush is on a fake punt.
That was the upshot of coach Pete Carroll being asked Monday if he had an update on Penny’s sprained anterior cruciate ligament. The 2018 first-round draft choice hurt his left knee on his only play of Seattle’s loss to the Los Angeles Rams Sunday, a 16-yard catch and run on a screen pass on the fifth play of the night.
“Unfortunately we missed him (during the 28-12 loss to the Rams). And we are going to miss him for the rest of the season,” Carroll said.
The coach didn’t have an update to the exact nature of Penny’s injury, nothing else beyond the “significant” sprain of the ACL Carroll mentioned Sunday night following the Seahawks’ first loss in six games.
“We had really been excited about him turning a corner and really taking hold of this thing and contributing in a big way,” Carroll said.
Penny had been emerging in the last month in more of a 1 and 1A arrangement at running back with Carson as Seattle has had since drafting Penny in the spring of 2018. Three games ago, Penny rushed for a career-high 122 yards in the team’s win at Philadelphia. The week after that, Carson had 39 snaps and Penny had 35 as Seattle beat Minnesota.
Without Penny, Seahawks running backs had just 16 carries at Los Angeles. Carson ran 15 times for 76 yards. Seattle fell behind 21-3 then abandoned the run to try and throw its way back into the game. Russell Wilson got bludgeoned by the Rams’ blitzes and edge rushers. L.A. sacked him five times and hit him 11 more.
The night to nowhere underscored, yet again, how important running effectively is for the Seahawks offensive line to adequately protect Wilson long enough to throw the ball down the field.
Now the Seahawks are 10-3, one game behind San Francisco for the division lead. They need answers for that running game, beginning Sunday at Carolina (5-8) in a game Seattle must win to keep its chances to win the NFC West realistic.
Prosise, Homer next up
Carroll said C.J. Prosise “will step into that role” as the second running back behind Carson and that rookie Travis Homer “will help out.”
“And we will see how those guys can do,” the coach said.
Homer was Seattle’s sixth-round draft choice from the University of Miami this past spring. He’s been a special-teams player and lately the replacement for ailing Tyler Lockett as the Seahawks’ kickoff returner.
Homer has had just one rush this season. That was on a fake punt last week in the win over Minnesota, for 29 yards.
After the loss to the Rams, Penny’s teammates said they were praying for him. They talked of Penny’s long road of rehabilitation ahead.
The tone and words suggested an ultimate diagnosis that could be more serious than a sprain in the knee’s important ligament.
Carson was the last player to talk to Penny on the field Sunday. That was before he limped off the sideline all the way around the end zone and up the long ramp to the Coliseum’s visiting locker room during the first quarter.
Carson had his rookie season with the Seahawks end with a broken leg in his fourth NFL game.
“Every player faces adversity at some point; I went through it my rookie year,” Carson said. “Like I told him, this is going to make you stronger.
I told him to keep his head up. We are all praying for him.”
That sounds like more than a sprained knee.
So does this:
“It’s tough, man. It’s tough,” Pro Bowl left tackle Duane Brown said. “He was having a good year, coming off a career game (last month at Philadelphia), really feeling his rhythm, having his confidence.
“I know he’ll rehab, do whatever’s needed to come back stronger.
“Praying for him.”
Out on opening drive
The recently resurgent Penny caught a screen pass from Wilson on the game’s opening drive and ran for 16 yard before Rams safety Taylor Rapp hit him with a routine-looking lower-body tackle. Penny landed on his torso face down, then limped off to Seattle’s nearby sideline.
He sat on the bench bouncing back and forth in pain for a moment while a doctor looked at his left knee and leg. He eventually limped into the observation tent behind the bench, then off the field into the Seahawks’ locker room with a team doctor at his side.
Prosise had eight injuries his first three years with Seattle. The Seahawks’ second-round draft choice in 2016, a former wide receiver from Notre Dame, has mostly been a third-down, receiving back in his 23-game career in the NFL with Seattle. He’s been inactive for six of the 13 games this season.
Sunday, Wilson tried to hand the ball to Prosise in the first half on a read-option play. Prosise never took the ball, as if he wasn’t expecting it.
He carried it only one time after that, for 2 yards.
It might be time for the Seahawks to take a longer look at Homer as the primary backup to Carson.
“We expect them to do well,” Carroll said of Prosise and Homer. “C.J.’s always done well (in a pass-catching role out of the backfield up to now) when given the chance. Now he’ll know he’s in the game plan and all of that, and hoping he’ll contribute in a big way. ...
“We are going to count on him to, really, just pick up where Rashaad left off.”
This story was originally published December 9, 2019 at 4:02 PM.
