Breakout end to 2021 earns Rashaad Penny 1-year, $5.75M deal to return to Seahawks
In four months, Rashaad Penny has gone from his NFL career being in doubt to a new Seahawks contract — at triple the pay.
Seattle on Sunday reached an agreement with the 26-year-old running back on a one-year contract. The team is expected to announce Penny’s new contract early this week, a league source told The News Tribune Sunday.
The deal is worth $5.75 million for 2022.
Penny stays with the team that made him a first-round draft choice out of San Diego State in 2018. The Seahawks stuck with him through three-plus years of injuries and frustration. Penny said late last season he wanted to return to Seattle past his expiring contract, because he was thankful for the team’s faith in him.
Penny will remain paired with Chris Carson in Seattle’s post-Russell Wilson offense, at a huge raise from the $1.95 million he earned last year in the final season of his rookie contract.
That’s a cool, 300% raise — thanks to how Penny played the final five weeks of the 2021 season.
The one-year deal gives Penny another chance at more millions in free agency this time next year, when the NFL salary cap is poised to spike with the start of the league’s new media-rights deals.
That is, if he can finally have an injury-free season. He was hurt basically for his first 3 1/2 seasons in the league with the Seahawks.
Never injured in his football career, Penny broke a bone in his hand in his rookie training camp of 2018. His multiple injuries continued through a torn anterior cruciate ligament in his knee in December 2019, and a non-contact injury catching a pass from Wilson in a game at the Los Angeles Rams.
Penny missed 12 months. He returned for limited work in the final three games of the 2020 season, basically out until 2021.
That’s why before last season Seattle declined his fifth-year contract option. It would have guaranteed him $4.52 million with the team in 2022.
He missed five of the Seahawks’ first six games of last season with yet another injury, a strained calf. Penny’s career seemed at a dead end. He was ending his rookie contract with doubts across the league about his ability to stay healthy for a new deal.
Then Adrian Peterson arrived.
The future Hall-of-Fame running back Seattle signed in November demanded Penny attack defenders who were trying to attack his repaired knee. Peterson, the 2012 NFL most valuable player, also had a torn ACL early in his career.
After Peterson joined the Seahawks, Penny had the four biggest games of his career: 137 yards yards rushing at Houston, 135 in the Seattle snow against Chicago, 170 against Detroit and 190 in the season finale at Arizona.
“They can’t tackle him,” Seahawks coach Pete Carroll said of Penny following that game.
That catapulted Penny from potentially scrambling to get a minimum-salary contract for 2022 from any team to now more money than he would have earned if the Seahawks had picked up that fifth-year option last offseason.
“When you have a guy who has been running in this league for so long, and is on the verge of the Hall of Fame, it honestly gives you a boost, and you want to mimic everything that you see him do,” Penny said of Peterson in January. “We kind of have (had) the same, similar type of injuries, so I’ve torn his ear off with all of the questions I’ve asked.”
Penny’s breakout came after Carson went out for the season and had neck surgery. The Seahawks are expecting Carson, their lead back, to return perhaps by June but in time for the start of next season. Yet Carson coming back to top form following a tricky neck injury is no sure thing.
At the end of last season, Penny looked like a sure thing for Carroll’s intent to reorient Seattle’s offense to run first after the team’s trade of quarterback Russell Wilson to Denver this month.
Penny joined former NFL most valuable player Shaun Alexander as the only Seahawks to rush for 130 or more yards in three consecutive games.
Is there any part of him tempted to say “See!” and “Look at me now!” at his many detractors, after all his injuries for four Seahawks years until his revival to end last season?
”That’s not me,” Penny said.
This story was originally published March 20, 2022 at 1:50 PM.
