Carlos Hyde: coronavirus hasn’t slowed surgery rehab, will be ready for Seahawks opener
Good thing for Carlos Hyde he’s been in Texas.
The newest Seahawks running back says Texas being open during the coronavirus pandemic enough for him to get physical therapy on his surgically repaired shoulder means he will be ready for the start of Seattle’s season.
“It really hasn’t complicated my rehab, at all. My rehab guy actually comes to me, and I do rehab at my home, when I’m back in Miami,” the 29-year-old Hyde said this week on a Zoom call from his other offseason home in Texas. “Here in Houston things are open, so I was able to go to a rehab facility here and do my rehab. So COVID hasn’t really stopped my rehab, at all.
“And I think I’m on time, you know, to participate when we get to (training) camp and everything. And by week one, I’m pretty sure I’ll be ready to go. I feel good. I feel like my shoulder has gotten a lot stronger than it was feeling before I got the surgery.
“So, yeah, things are definitely going in the right direction with my shoulder.”
The Seahawks signed Hyde last month counting on that.
He got a one-year contract with a base salaries and guarantees of at least $2.75 million, and other performance and roster bonuses that could push deal up to $4 million. That was after he turned down Houston’s offer on a new contract. He rushed for a career-high 1,070 yards and played in his first career playoff game last season, his only one with the Texans.
Seattle signed Hyde on the belief that he will indeed be ready for the opener, scheduled to be Sept. 10 at Atlanta. They are likely to need him that day.
Hyde acknowledged the obvious this week, that the starting job in Seattle is Chris Carson’s. Hyde said, realistically, he’s here to compete for the number-two job behind Carson.
The Seahawks’ lead back has romped for 2,300 yards combined in his last two, injury-shortened seasons. Carson is coming off a season-ending cracked hip but he did not need surgery. That has the fourth-year veteran and his team believing he will be ready for the start of the season.
Not so with Rashaad Penny, Carson’s backup the last two seasons. Seattle’s first-round pick in 2018 tore ligaments in his knee in the Seahawks’ loss at the Los Angeles Rams in early December. He is six months into recovery from reconstructive knee surgery, a process that usually takes nine to 12 months. Coach Pete Carroll said this offseason it’s possible Penny begins training camp and perhaps the season on the physically-unable-to-perform list. That would mean Penny would miss at least the first six games of 2020.
That puts Hyde squarely with Carson in the Seahawks’ run-first plans for Russell Wilson and the offense.
Though his recovery and rehab haven’t been affected by the pandemic, Hyde believes the travel restrictions on free agents imposed by the NFL in response to the COVID-19 virus did keep him from getting the richer offers he expected in March.
In February Hyde rejected an offer to stay with the Texans. 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.
Asked 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 played with it all season. I hurt my shoulder in week two,” he said. “At the moment, when I first hurt it, I thought it was difficult to play with...I just kind of played through it.
“I figured if I ran hard enough then nobody could hit me in my shoulder. So, I just thought I needed to run harder.”
In March, just as the free-agent market opened, 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 and a season with Seattle, Hyde was restricted from traveling to teams to take physical exams. Hyde 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.
With Carson and Penny recovering from season-ending injuries, 2019 rookie Travis Homer was the only fully healthy rusher on Seattle’s 90-man offseason roster who has started an NFL game: one. That was in late December, after Carson, Penny and C.J. Prosise all got hurt.
In April the Seahawks drafted DeeJay Dallas, a running back from the University of Miam. He is a former college running back who could replace the departed Proisise as the pass-catching back on third downs.
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.
The pandemic has kept Hyde from meeting his new Seahawks teammates in coaches and teammates in person; they’ve been having daily Zoom calls to go over the playbook until they are allowed back in the closed team facility in Renton. That likely will not be until the start of training camp. That’s supposed to be July 28 in Renton.
Whenever it happens, Hyde will be nervous. This is the fifth team since late in the 2017 season for the former 49er, Brown, Jaguar, Chief (for a few offseason months last year) and Texan.
“It’s always nerves, you know. It’s the like your first day of school at a new school,” he said. “I mean, you’ve got to make all new friends, and kind of feel the vibe out.
“What I’m most anxious about: actually, just getting on a field. Just getting on the field, actually hearing a play call from the quarterback. And just being a part of it.”
