Chris Carson calls move by Cowboys’ Trysten Hill that injured him: ‘a bulls***-a** play’
No, Chris Carson did not appreciate how he sprained his knee two games ago, in one of the worst tricks in football.
Dallas Cowboys defensive tackle Trysten Hill tackled the Seahawks’ lead running back on a running play at the line of scrimmage late in the teams’ frantic game Sept. 27. After the tackle, with the play essentially over, Hill held onto Carson’s leg and twisted it.
It’s called among football players a “gator roll.”
Carson calls it something else.
“I thought it was kind of a bulls***-a** play,” Carson said Thursday, in his first interview since the injury.
“But it is what it is.”
His coach, Pete Carroll, said he was “pissed” at Hill’s trick.
Carson said he feared while lying on the ground as trainers and the Seahawks team doctor rushed to his aid that he had a severe leg or knee injury.
“Yeah, I was nervous. Of course,” Carson said. “I mean, that’s one of my injury legs that I had during high school.
“So my first initial reaction was, you know, something happened again. I mean, I felt a sharp pain.
“But yeah, I was relieved once the MRI results came in and said that I was good.”
Those tests showed what Carroll described as a first-degree sprain of his knee. Carson didn’t practice much last week, and his team listed him as questionable to play at Miami.
Yet he started the game and scored its first touchdown.
Then, in the second quarter, Dolphins linebacker Elandon Roberts lowered his shoulder into Carson’s head while other Miami defenders held up Carson in a pile at the end of a run. Carson went down immediately onto his back and stayed down, grabbing at his face mask. Trainers and a team doctor again rushed to him. He walked slowly off the field then spent an extended time in the blue observation tent behind the Seahawks’ bench.
The team said he was being evaluated for a concussion and was questionable to return to the game. But on the first play of the third quarter, there was Carson carrying the ball off left tackle.
He finished the day rushing or 80 yards and two touchdowns to send Seattle to the second 4-0 start to a season in team history. The other time was in 2013, the Seahawks’ Super Bowl-championship season.
“I told (Carroll) I was playing no matter what,” Carson said.
Carson also hurdled a Dolphins defender along the sideline after a catch. Yes, on a sprained knee.
The hurdle defied a promise he’s made to his mother not to do that anymore. She told him two seasons ago those plays he loves to make scare her.
“Sometimes you’ve got to go back on promises,” he said, jokingly. “But I talked to my mom after the game. She told me she was straight.
“She told me it was a good play. So I think she gave me the green light to keep doing it.”
After the Seahawks’ win in Miami, wide receiver DK Metcalf called Carson “an animal” for playing as, and how, he did on sprained knee.
Why did he?
Because this is his contract year.
This is the final season of the four-year deal Carson signed with Seattle as a seventh-round draft choice in 2017 out of Oklahoma State. The Seahawks have yet to offer him an extension he thinks he already should have received, for gaining 2,381 yards rushing total and 16 touchdowns in the previous two seasons for a perennial playoff team, for being the workhorse back upon which Carroll bases his offenses.
But Carson has not completed a full season injury-free since junior college.
“That’s a goal I set for myself this year. I wanted to play 16 games (the entire regular season),” Carson said. “I mean, so no matter what the situation is, you know, injuries, stuff like that, I want to tell myself if I can play through it. I’m gonna play through it.
“I know that’s one of the big knocks that a lot of teams have on me, is: Can you play a whole season?
“And I want to prove to myself and prove to everybody else that I can.”
Dallas’ Hill almost ended that with his despised act.
Carson said the Cowboys’ defensive lineman apologized to him after that Sept. 27 game.
“Yeah, he reached out to me,” Carson said. “You know I read it, and I appreciate him reaching out and apologize for everything.”
Carson’s injury history is why the Seahawks drafted running back Rashaad Penny in the first round in 2018. It’s likely why the team has yet to offer Carson an extension beyond 2020.
Asked last month if he’d like to be in Seattle for as long as he can anticipate, Carson gave a noticeably muted, albeit realistic answer. It shows he understands the cold, what-have-you-done-for-us-lately business of the NFL. Particularly at running back.
“I mean, if everything plays out the right ways,” he said. “I guess we are going to have to see.”
Carson admitted as he began his fourth season he’s considering his contract and wondering — for now, anyway — where he will be beyond this year.
“I mean, of course that’s something that’s in my head, on my mind. You see a lot of guys that are starting to get paid,” he said. “You see somebody get paid, your phone blows up. Everybody’s up in you like, ‘Oh, did you see so-and-so got paid, blah, blah, blah.’
“Like I said, man, I just try not to focus on it.”
Five weeks ago the Cincinnati Bengals gave Joe Mixon a four-year contract extension worth $48 million.
Mixon went in the second round of the 2017 draft to Cincinnati. Carson went to Seattle five rounds later that year, in the final round. Carson was the 249th of 253 choices in that draft
Mixon entered this season having averaged 66.6 yards rushing per game with 17 rushing touchdowns in his three-year career. Carson, 22 months older, averaged 78.5 yards per game with 16 rushing touchdowns in his first three seasons.
He has 237 yards rushing through four games. He got just six carries in the opener at Atlanta. But he had two touchdown receptions that day to equal his total for the 2019 season, as Seattle had Russell Wilson throw all over the Falcons en route to 38 points and the win.
Sunday, he’ll play in his 38th career regular-season game, against the Vikings. He’s played them twice and has averaged 96 yards and more than 22 carries per game in those two Minnesota games.
Though Wilson’s NFL record-setting passing is why the Seahawks are 4-0, Carson wouldn’t mind staying in his Minnesota form.
Whatever helps in this contract year, now that he’s gotten past Hill’s “gator roll.”
This story was originally published October 8, 2020 at 2:54 PM.
