New Seahawks vet Carlos Hyde realizes he’s likely vying for no. 2 job behind Chris Carson
Carlos Hyde is 29. That’s old’s enough to already know what his opportunity is in Seattle.
It’s not, realistically, to start. It’s to be number two.
“It’s probably an open competition for that second role. I don’t think—me, personally—I don’t think there’s probably an open competition for the starting role,” Hyde said Monday.
They were among his first comments with Seattle’s media since the veteran coming off a 1,000-yard season with the Texans signed as the newest Seahawks running back on May 28. He talked online via Zoom from his home in Houston.
The former lead rusher for San Francisco during his 2014-17 with the 49ers knows Chris Carson is entrenched as his new team’s lead back. Carson has rushed for more than 2,300 yards combined the last two seasons. He is coming off a cracked hip that ended his 2019 season in December. He did not need surgery.
He and the Seahawks believe Carson will be ready for the season of the 2020 season in September.
“I think everybody knows who the starting running back is for Seattle,” Hyde said. “And that’s Carson.
“I knew that before I even signed with Seattle, that he was the guy.”
So why is Hyde with Seattle, after his first 1,000-yard rushing season of his six-year career last year for a Texans team that went to the AFC championship game?
In February Hyde rejected an offer to stay with the Texans, after he rushed for 1,070 yards and played in his first career playoff game during his only season with Houston. His one-year, $2.8 million contract he had signed with Kansas City in free agency last year before the Chiefs traded him to the Texans ended in January.
When asked about why he didn’t re-sign with the Texans after he had said he wanted to, Hyde said Monday: “Things just didn’t work out. We just didn’t see eye to eye.”
Hyde wanted to parlay his career year into free-agent riches when the market opened in March. But he also was coming off surgery to repair a shoulder he injured in week two last season yet played through in 2019.
“I figured if I ran hard enough, then no one could hit me in my shoulder,” he said Monday. “So I just thought I needed to run harder.”
Then in March the coronavirus pandemic shut down NFL travel for free agents. Like Jadeveon Clowney, the three-time Pro Bowl pass rusher seeking a free-agent deal coming off core surgery, Hyde was restricted from traveling to teams to take physical exams. He could not prove he was medically worthy of a big-bucks deal.
So, like Clowney, he waited and watched the NFL free-agency market do what the rest of the U.S. economy did: basically stop.
“I think it was because of my shoulder, and what the restrictions were in each state,” he said. “The whole coronavirus kind of put a setback (to my plans), with my shoulder.”
Meanwhile, Seattle coach Pete Carroll was talking about the need to add depth at running back. Carson was still rehabbing from his hip injury.
His backup Rashaad Penny, the Seahawks’ first-round pick in 2018, is coming off reconstructive knee surgery from an injury that ended his second NFL season in early December. It’s possible Penny will begin the 2020 season on the physically-unable-to-perform list and miss at least the first six games.
The Seahawks drafted DeeJay Dallas, a running back from the University of Miami, in late April. He is a former college running back who could replace departed C.J. Proisise as the pass-catching back on third downs. Travis Homer, a rookie last year, was the only healthy rusher with any experience in an NFL game on the Seattle’s 90-man roster entering May. Homer has one more NFL start than you do, in late December after Carson, Penny and Prosise all had season-ending injuries.
Seattle talked last month with former Falcons Pro Bowl 1,000-yard back Devonta Freeman on possibly signing for one year and $4 million. Freeman declined that offer.
So the Seahawks offered that instead to Hyde—with caveats.
He signed a one-year contract with a base salary of $1.5 million and a $750,000 signing bonus. He can earn up to $500,000 more in per-game roster bonuses, and more cash on top of that in performance bonuses.
So if he plays—if Penny and/or Carson are not playing and the Seahawks need Hyde—they will gladly pay him up to the $4 million.
For now, Hyde is insurance for Carroll’s run-based offense. Insurance that history says the Seahawks will need.
Penny has had a broken hand and now torn knee ligaments in each of his first two seasons.
The bulldozing Carson, Seattle’s seventh-round pick in 2017 out of Oklahoma State, hasn’t played a full season injury free since he was in junior college. He is entering the final year of his rookie contract, and the Seahawks have a decision upcoming on whether to re-sign him at the position with the shortest shelf-life and highest injury rate in the league.
Though not expecting a starting role, Hyde does expect to play in a Seahawks running game that he says he’s admired within the NFC West for years because it fits his physical style.
“It’s been a place I’ve always wanted to play ever since I left San Francisco,” Hyde said. “Just, you know, going against the guys for four years in my time in San Fran, I just saw how they always ran the ball, all the way back to when Marshawn (Lynch) was there (from 2010-15, in the Pro Bowl pounder’s first Seattle stint). I know how they were a big running team, and the ways they ran the ball, I just felt like it was a strength of my game. You see a lot of (shot)gun runs. I did a lot of runs when I was coming out of college.”
That was when Hyde, a native of Cincinnati who moved to Naples, Fla., as a kid to live with his grandmother for better opportunities, starred at Ohio State. Then after the 49ers drafted him in the second round in 2014, then-San Francisco coach Chip Kelly used Hyde on runs out of shotgun formation.
Houston did it even more with Hyde last season. Because he didn’t arrive from the Chiefs in the trade until days before the opening game, he didn’t learn more than each week’s game plan. Hyde had a career year and his first 1,000-yard season without known the Texans’ full play book.
Another plus in Hyde’s favor signing with Seattle as his fifth team since late in 2017: he will be—whenever the pandemic allows him and Seahawks players to practice at the now-closed team headquarters in Renton—closer to his son and his girlfriend in the Bay Area. Carlos Jr. will turn 2 in September.
“Will Coach Carroll change his mind (about who his starting running back is in 2020)? Uh, maybe. I don’t really know,” Hyde said.
“But I know maybe the second spot is open, maybe the first spot. I’m going to come in there and compete for the first spot, you know, make sure that I solidify myself. And go from there.”
