The Seattle Seahawks have been one of the best teams in the NFL to start the regular season. At 4-2, the Seahawks have shown that they have the potential to be Super Bowl contenders with a stout defense and the NFL’s leading receiver in Jaxon Smith-Njigba. One area that has left a lot to be desired, however, is the running game.
The Seahawks are the 24th-ranked rushing offense in the NFL, averaging 104.2 yards per game. Kenneth Walker III and Zach Charbonnet have split time as the Seahawks’ main running backs, but Charbonnet has gotten a large share of carries despite his lack of production for the team compared to Walker.
Walker has 78 snaps to Charbonnet’s 60 snaps, and Charbonnet has played in one less game than Walker. In Week Six, Charbonnet outsnapped Walker 33 to 19 snaps. However, the limited snap count for Walker might not be an indictment of his standing with the team after all.
Preserving Walker
Seahawks running back Kenneth Walker III is coming off a few often-injured, disappointing seasons after he had a breakout rookie season with the team. This year, even going back to training camp, the team has taken steps to try to preserve Walker’s health. Now, during the season, the team is staggering his carries from game to game with Zach Charbonnet.
Gregg Bell of The Tacoma News Tribune highlighted on Twitter how the team is trying to keep Walker healthy.
“Charbonnet was in that entire drive. That has happened in every game this season,” Bell said. “Walker has a foot issue they are managing. That’s why he doesn’t play every drive.”
To make sure Walker makes it through a full season, Walker likely won’t receive the majority of the carries for the rest of the regular season. While health is at the forefront of the running back timeshare, there is also a strategy involved.
Strategic Advantages
The strategic reasoning behind playing Zach Charbonnet more frequently than Kenneth Walker III seems absurd when one compares their numbers.
According to Ian Hartitz of Fantasy Life, in the five full games Walker and Charbonnet have played together, Walker has 326 total yards compared to Charbonnet’s 156 total yards, and Walker only has five more touches in that time span.
Another less-than-flattering Charbonnet statistic comes from Josh Norris of Underdog, who tweeted about Charbonnet’s stuff rate.
“Of every RB in Week 6 with 10+ carries, Zach Charbonnet had the worst stuff rate in the NFL (41.7%) per PFF,” Norris said.
As frustrating as those statistics are to Seahawks fans, Tyler Alsin of Field Gulls thinks there is logic behind Charbonnet getting more touches. Due to the type of offense Klint Kubiak runs, the Seahawks face the highest amount of stacked boxes in the league, something they can use to their advantage.
“It’s because of the tight end usage and formation that Kubiak runs,” Alsin says. “In part, it’s also why the play action deep passes are so successful, so they’re not going to change it.”
Charbonnet is used to prevent the injury-prone Walker from repeatedly running into a brick wall.
“Rather than running their best back into a brick wall 28 times a game, why not use Charbonnet? This will infuriate fans all year, but the Seattle objective is not always to achieve elite run success,” Alsin says. “They’re running because they must run – it’s part of the scheme and play deception – not because it’s their strength.”
As long as the strategy continues to open up the passing game and preserves Walker’s health, the Seahawks will continue to give Charbonnet more touches than Walker.
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