The Seattle Seahawks may have been without Marshawn Lynch for the vast majority of last season. This didn’t stop the team from finishing with the third-best rushing offense in the entire NFL.
One of the primary reasons for this success was the performance of un-drafted rookie free agent Thomas Rawls from Central Michigan.
The first-year player recorded over 900 total yards and five touchdowns in 13 games. Though, Rawls saw less than seven rush attempts in seven games. This means that the youngster did most of his damage in limited action with Lynch out, as magnified by his ridiculous 5.7 yards per attempt average.
With Lynch now doing his thing in retirement, Seattle is going to be relying on Rawls to be its primary ball carrier this upcoming season.
For his part, Rawls doesn’t seem to be concerned with what is going to be a heavier workload:
“I just go out there and work hard and do my job and have an amazing coaching staff and an amazing teammates to encourage me,” Rawls said, via the team’s website. “And also just my support back home. Just fighting through all types of adversity, I rise up and I rise to the occasion at times like this, so it’s no pressure.”
That has to be music to the ears of fans in Seattle. Rawls did prove himself to be worthy of the confidence of the team prior to suffering an ugly broken ankle during a mid December game against the Baltimore Ravens.
While Seattle will likely add a running back at some point in the draft, it’s going into the 2016 season looking for some solid production from Rawls. If that doesn’t happen, the team is going to be in all sorts of trouble.
Based off what we saw last season, those within the organization shouldn’t be concerned. Of course, this is all dependent on the running back rebounding from the aforementioned injury.