What Seahawks RB Rashaad Penny has a chance to prove in 2019

Jul 18, 2019, 10:00 AM | Updated: 11:16 am

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Seahawks RB Rashaad Penny had his first 100-yard game in Week 10 last year. (AP)

(AP)

Seattle Sports

The Seahawks kick off training camp on July 25, and until then, Brock and Salk will count down the top 25 most intriguing Seahawks every weekday at 8:30 a.m. Their list continues with No. 6: Running back Rashaad Penny.

Listen to the full segment here, and check out the highlights below:

Quick look

• Drafted in the first round by Seattle in 2018.
• Finished rookie season with 419 yards on 85 carries (4.9 YPA) and two touchdowns.

What Brock Huard is saying

“He’s number one as far as being in the cross-hairs of this show. If there’s one player that on this team that gets more debate on this show in particular it is the former first-round pick Rashaad Penny, who came in last year and blew a lot of people away early. Even Chris Carson was like, I don’t have feet like him. He’s 230 pounds and an amazing athlete and that first impression he made was a very strong impression — that this guy is a tremendous athlete and he’s a worker. And then, unfortunately, a finger injury in camp knocked him out a few weeks. And then — and Pete Carroll doesn’t hold guys accountable publicly very often — but if you remember, Pete Carroll said Penny was up in weight and had gained about 10 pounds. (It matters to coaches because) that equates to discipline and decision-making; are you making the right choices? And I think that young rookie just got behind.

“He’s intriguing because he’s a first-round running back with a team that already had Chris Carson. This is an organization that usually doesn’t even like to draft in the first but they said this is the guy we want, explicitly. This is a guy that’s going to come in here and be a game-changer. And he wasn’t; it was Chris Carson last year.

“But Carson had offseason knee surgery this spring and was a non-participant in OTAs and every day Rashaad Penny was out there and looked pretty good. But let’s put the pads on, let’s get him to training camp. Let’s see if everything he’s talked about — being on top of the details — plays itself out when it matters. There were enough flashes of brilliance, especially with reversing field, which something you don’t normally get away with with the speed of the NFL.”

What makes him so intriguing?

“At times he gave us glimpses as to why he was a first-round pick,” Mike Salk said. “But there wasn’t first-round production. Can he make everyone think that a running back was worth it in the first round? Can he show the world that he was actually worth where the Seahawks picked him? I think this is a huge year for him to show he’s got value.”