Re-signed Chris Carson buys mom a house, sees a new role with a new Seahawks play caller
Chris Carson chuckles at the question.
No, he hasn’t bought anything for himself since he signed back with the Seahawks last month. That’s true to the 26-year old’s relatively quiet, understated nature.
But the two-year contract worth up to $14,625,000 with $5.5 million guaranteed he signed March 27 to return as Seattle’s lead running back has already bought something that is hugely important to Carson.
He just purchased for his mother, Dina Rowe, the house she had been renting from a family friend since a fire burned down Carson’s family home in Lilburn, Georgia. That was in 2013, two days after Christmas, when Carson was home on break from a life detour at Butler Community College in Kansas.
“We just paid her house off. That was something that I wanted to do,” Carson said with pride in his voice this week.
“We finally paid it off. Now, it’s in her name. ...
“It’s just something that we wanted to do, something (that I’m) blessed to do.”
Carson feels particularly blessed right now. He’s entering the fifth year of a career, with a contract folks from his high school in Georgia, the junior college in Kansas, Oklahoma State University and the NFL all told him he wouldn’t have.
“It’s a blessing, you know what I mean?” Carson said. “Just part of my story. For me, it’s something that I can always be proud of. Me not supposed to be here, the odds are that a seventh-rounder doesn’t get to free agency like that.
“So, it’s a blessing.”
His chip on his shoulder has been real since his senior year of high school. In 2012, he tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his knee during his final season playing for Lilburn Parkview High School in his hometown. The injury changed his plans to play football for the home-state University of Georgia.
Instead, he went to Butler Community College, in El Dorado, Kansas, just northeast of Wichita. He was home from there on Christmas break when a malfunctioning circuit breaker started an electrical fire that destroyed his family’s home in Lilburn.
Carson has not had a full, injury-free season dating to those junior-college days at Butler CC. Those were in 2013 and ‘14. He had a hand injury that cost him games in 2016, his last of two years at Oklahoma State. Those were his two years of major college football instead of his planned four.
Carroll’s love
Despite all of Carson’s injuries and detours, Seahawks coach Pete Carroll loved the way the supremely fit, 5-foot-11, 223-pound Carson punished defenders who tried to tackle him at Oklahoma State. Carroll had college game films that showed Carson seeking to hit defenders in Big 12 Conference games and in the 2016 Alamo Bowl against Colorado, almost instead of gaining more yards.
Carroll had been trying to find an equivalent to the brutal style and attitude Marshawn Lynch gave the Seahawks as the lead back during the team’s Super Bowl seasons of 2013 and ‘14. He found one in Carson. Rarely has the veteran coach gushed over a seventh-round draft choice like he did the day he selected Carson four years ago.
Once he got to Seattle in 2017, Carson found more motivation—across the Seahawks’ locker room, in the far left corner. That’s where Doug Baldwin went from no NFL team drafting him to a $40 million Super Bowl champion, a Pro Bowl wide receiver and a Seahawks record-setter.
“Doug going undrafted and then making money, I look up to guys like that,” Carson said of the now-retired wide receiver.
“I’m just glad I can make some money playing the game I love.”
Asked how happy he is to be back with the Seahawks, on a scale of one to 10, Carson said: “Oh, a 10.”
“It’s the team that gave me my first shot in the league, so I felt like it was the right decision,” he said.
“Like I said, it was just a right feel, you know what I mean? I prayed about it. Me and my family talked about it. I just knew that Seattle was the right fit.”
It didn’t always appear that way.
Carson wanted a new Seahawks contract before the 2020 season began. He’s been Seattle’s lead running back since the first game of his rookie season of 2017. He had gained 2,381 yards with 16 rushing touchdowns total in 2018 and ‘19. He was entering the final year of his contract.
Yet the Seahawks had not talked to him about a new deal. They were, like much of the league, weary of committing big money to a position with the sport’s biggest injury rate.
Carson said in early September his contract situation was on his mind then, as NFL draft classmate Joe Mixon with Cincinnati (four years, $48 million) and other running backs were getting new money.
“I thought about not getting signed while other running backs were getting signed during my last season,” Carson said Thursday, “so it was a possibility that I was done with Seattle.”
He shopped in the first days of free agency. Multiple teams made offers. None were for anything close to what Mixon had received months earlier from the Bengals.
“It was definitely difficult, just the whole process...Teams made offers,” Carson said. “There were teams that made it tough in deciding to go with the Seahawks, and everything like that.”
Ultimately, he chose the money he could get in a soft running-back market. It came back to Seattle’s price range in an offseason with a decreased salary cap for all teams. Carson also chose familiarity, plus the chance to re-enter free agency in the spring of 2023 at age 28.
He also chose to answer the nagging of Russell Wilson.
Recruited back by Wilson
“Yeah, he was definitely in my ear,” Carson said of the Seahawks’ franchise quarterback.
“We talked about it before the season ended, that we didn’t want this to be the last year to play with each other.
“But, yeah, he was in my ear during this offseason.”
Wilson wasn’t the only Seahawk recruiting him back.
Carson and number-two running back Rashaad Penny have become tight since Seattle drafted Penny in the first round out of San Diego State in 2018, a year after the team drafted Carson. Penny has been beset by injuries with the Seahawks. He returned in December from 12 months out following reconstructive knee surgery.
“Besides Russ, Rashaad was one of the biggest recruiters who tried to get me back,” Carson said.
Penny is entering the final year of his rookie contract. Carson said his backup lobbied him, hard, to return for 2021 and beyond, even though that takes away Penny’s first real chance to be Seattle’s lead back this year.
“Everybody knows he’s like a brother to me,” Carson said.
Carson said with him re-signing and Penny healthy again, they have a chance to give the Seahawks “one of the top rushing duos in the league.
“We both bring a different feel to the game. We both have different attributes. We complement each other so well. ...
“I think it can be something special.”
And they’ve got a new play caller to feature them.
More run-based
Carson and Penny are in the early stages of getting to know Shane Waldron. Carroll hired the former passing-game coordinator from the division-rival Los Angeles Rams in January to replace fired Brian Schottenheimer as Seattle’s offensive coordinator. Carroll hopes to re-balance the offense with more of a Rams style. That is, with more basis on the run—on Carson and Penny—to help Wilson’s pass protection in 2021.
Carroll said upon NFC West-champion Seattle’s premature end to the 2020 season in the first round of the playoffs the Seahawks’ offense must “adapt better” to how defenses play it.
“We have to run the ball better. And not even better; we have to run it more,” Carroll said during his season-ending press conference in January.
With Waldron as one of the schemers in coach Sean McVay’s offense in Los Angeles, Todd Gurley became a two-time All-Pro running back with a franchise-player contract he signed in 2018 that guaranteed him $45 million. Last season, rookie Cam Akers succeeded the injured and departed Gurley as the Rams’ lead back. Akers averaged more than 4 yards per carry during the regular season then romped for 131 yards in L.A.’s playoff win over the Seahawks in Seattle in January.
Carson believes Waldron’s arrival signals better days ahead for him and Seattle’s running backs.
“I’m excited. I talked to him a little bit when I went down (to Seahawks headquarters in Renton) to sign,” Carson said. “Running backs coach Chad (Morton) hit me up a little bit and said it was something that was going to benefit us. ...
“It’s just going to make things a lot simpler and clearer for us. I think it’s going to benefit us.”
This story was originally published April 16, 2021 at 1:03 PM.
