No surprise: Seahawks not expected to pick up Rashaad Penny’s fifth-year contract option
Instead of guaranteeing Rashaad Penny a fifth year, the Seahawks want their former first-round pick to guarantee them he can play one year completely healthy.
Seattle was expected to decline its fifth-year contract option on Penny by Monday’s deadline to do so. NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport reported that Monday.
It’s been obvious since last year that the Seahawks would do this for their number-two running back behind starter Chris Carson.
All players drafted into the NFL get four-year rookie contracts. Per the league’s collective bargaining agreement, first-round picks have the opportunities for fifth years, at the option and decision of their drafting teams and at a cost set by the league. That cost is based on an average of top-performing salaries at each position.
Penny was Seattle’s 27th-overall choice in 2018, the leading rusher in major college football at San Diego State.
The 25-year-old Penny would have gotten $4.52 million guaranteed for next year, plus all $1.95 million of his 2021 salary guaranteed, had the Seahawks picked up his option.
Those are steep guarantees to pay for a running back, the league’s most injury-prone position—particularly one who has has yet to stay healthy and available for all 16 games of a regular season in his first three NFL years.
Penny was out from December 2019 to December 2020 after he tore knee ligaments running in the open field during a game two seasons ago at the Los Angeles Rams.
He returned last season to play in three games in December.
“He exceeded our expectations with his movement and his quickness and all of that,” coach Pete Carroll said upon Penny’s return from missing a year.
He rushed 11 times for 34 yards in three games last December. He was inactive for Seattle’s home playoff loss to the Rams in January.
Penny also broke a bone in his hand during his rookie training camp. That set him back to begin the 2018 season. He played 14 games that rookie year, 10 in 2019 and the three last season. He’s shown flashes of why Seattle made him a first-round pick—108 yards on 12 carries his rookie season at the Rams, 14 rushes for 129 yards at Philadelphia in 2019—but he just hadn’t been available consistently.
If Penny has a healthy, productive 2021 for the Seahawks they still could bring him back for 2022. But that will now be at their price, not the league-mandated cost by position for a fifth-year option.
In March the Seahawks re-signed Carson, their seventh-round pick in 2017. He got two years and $14.6 million.
Carson, 26, is the first running back not named Marshawn Lynch to get a multiyear contract extension from the Seahawks in the Carroll-John Schneider leadership era that began in 2010.
This story was originally published May 3, 2021 at 9:09 AM.
