Lacy vs. Rawls is marquee competition of Seahawks camp
Published 1:30 am Friday, July 28, 2017
All spring into summer, it’s been Eddie Lacy.
Eddie Lacy’s career restart. Eddie Lacy’s weigh-ins and weight bonuses. Eddie Lacy’s doing everything the Seattle Seahawks have asked of him, and more. Eddie Lacy’s P90X home-fitness program. Eddie Lacy’s “Beach Body Challenge.”
Heck, even Eddie Lacy’s garage sale.
It’s enough to make Thomas Rawls…myopic.
“If there was a depth chart with three selective players, I look at it as Thomas Rawls, Thomas Rawls and Thomas Rawls,” Seattle’s third-year running back said.
Rawls is Lacy’s competitor in the Seahawks’ hottest summer position battle. Not that Rawls will admit that, though.
“I’ve always been in competition with myself,” Rawls said. “I just believe that this program, this whole organization has a mindset of competition.
“We believe that as long as people compete they will earn whatever they deserve in the end, it’ll work itself out.”
The competition begins Sunday, with the start of training camp.
Deciding how to use Lacy and Rawls is arguably the top issue the Seahawks must figure out during the five weeks of camp practices and exhibition games.
Lacy was Seattle’s biggest offseason splash — and not because he reportedly weighed 267 pounds at one of his free-agent visits before signing with the Seahawks in March. That’s 33 pounds above his listed playing weight when he was with the Green Bay Packers. And it’s far above what he was in 2013 when he was the NFL’s offensive rookie of the year with the Packers.
The Seahawks signed Lacy to a one-year, prove-it contract full of incentives that can just about double his $2,865,000 million in guarantees. He can earn up to an additional $1.3 million if he approaches or surpasses the 1,178 yards rushing he had in that monster rookie season four years ago. He has already collected another $110,000 of a possible $385,000 by reaching team-mandated benchmarks in monthly weigh-ins. Those resume in August, when he needs to be under 250 pounds to earn another $55,000.
The idea is Lacy, who turned 27 last month, will be ultra-motivated by these contract terms, and by the fact he has a fresh start toward earning a possible huge windfall in unrestricted free agency next spring. His ballooning weight, his 758 and 360 yards in each of the last two seasons — with just three of his 23 career touchdown runs in those two years combined — plus the ankle injury and surgery that ended his Packers tenure in October cost Lacy his chance at a multiyear deal and big signing bonus in free agency this past spring.
The Seahawks envision him as a runner something like Marshawn Lynch was from 2010-15, the type that would rather run over and through your facemask than around you. Though his total rushing yards were down in recent years, Lacy’s average of 2.79 yards after contact per carry over the past three seasons is second only to Pittsburgh’s Le’Veon Bell (2.82), according to Pro Football Focus.
Lacy at his bulldozing best is what Seattle lacked in the running game last season, for the first time in the Pete Carroll era. The Seahawks fell from perennially among the league’s top five in rushing offense to 25th last season.
“I mean, I can’t ask for, like, a better environment,” Lacy said last month of his new team and city.
He fell so far out of Green Bay’s plans the Packers had a number 88, wide receiver Ty Montgomery, as their lead back for much of last season.
“I know, as of right now, you are only as good as your last game, your last opportunities,” Lacy said.
That’s why this opportunity over the next five weeks of training camp and the preseason is more important for him than for most fifth-year veterans with two 1,000-yard seasons in this league.
And guess who Lacy’s new Seahawks play in the 2017 opener in six weeks? The Packers, at Lambeau Field.
For Rawls, this training camp is about reestablishing himself.
The backup at Michigan before one transfer season at Central Michigan burst into the NFL in 2015 as an undrafted free agent. He led the NFL with 5.6 yards per carry in his debut season, while Lynch was hurt for the first time in his career. Rawls in 2015 became the first undrafted rookie in league history to rush for 160 yards or more in two different games.
He broke his ankle in an early December 2015 game at Baltimore. It took into the following September before he was fully in the offense again. Then in Week 2 of last season at Los Angeles, Rawls cracked a bone in his leg. He wasn’t right again until December. His ability to run around and through tacklers diminished. He rushed for an pedestrian average of 3.2 yards per carry in 2016, and for just 349 yards on the season. He played in just nine of 16 regular-season games.
Rawls hasn’t played an entire season as a starting back since high school in Flint, Michigan. Academic and other issues at Central Michigan resulted in a suspension his final college season, after years as a reserve at Michigan.
If the Seahawks could count on Rawls to be their featured back for an entire season, Lacy may not be here.
“I feel even better. I actually (got) an offseason,” Rawls said. “ I just remember coming off those injuries and everything, it was kind of tough. You also learn from being a professional and in a way, it kind of humbles you in a lot of different ways.
“I’ve been having a great offseason and I’ve been feeling way better moving a lot, taking no days off and getting back to the grind.”
That grind gets real starting on Sunday. Maybe.
Lacy may not be fully ready to join Rawls in this competition just yet. Lacy had two screws, wires and a metal plate put into his leg to repair his ankle last fall. He was not on the field for team scrimmaging in organized team activities or minicamp last month, but the team expects him to be full go at some point during the preseason. Just maybe not on Day 1 of training camp.
“It’s a steady progression,” Lacy said. “As long as I continue to get better, I’ll just continue to do more — and whatever they allow me to do.”
Asked last month if Lacy would be full go for the start of training camp, Carroll said: “I can’t see how he wouldn’t be. I think he’s at a really good tempo already.”
There are other factors to this featured Lacy-versus-Rawls competition. C.J. Prosise returns to be the third-down back after an impressive but injury-filled rookie season. Prosise will also take some opportunities away from Lacy and Rawls during 2-minute, hurry-up drives at the end of halves and games.
And the offensive line must improve to give either Lacy or Rawls a fair chance to succeed. Gale Sayers would have had trouble gaining yards consistently last season with the (lack of) holes and running lanes opened by the league’s youngest, cheapest and lowest-rated line. Seattle has new starters in four of the five spots again entering this training camp.
There may be no clear winner in Lacy versus Rawls this summer, maybe not until deep into the season. Carroll rarely gives his lead-back candidates much work in the four exhibition games. Plus, he has a history when he’s had them of using two, pounding backs almost interchangeably and riding the hot hand and legs as games progress, such as with Reggie Bush and LenDale White a dozen years ago at USC.
A scenario could happen in which Rawls gets carries early in games, Prosise gets the third-down and hurry-up work, then Lacy gets the bulk of his carries ramming into tiring defenders in the second half on Sundays, as something of a closer. That is how Carroll could dictate games with his will as he did in Seattle’s Super Bowl seasons of 2013 and ‘14, punishing and controlling opponents with defense and a smash-mouth running game. That plan works far better when the Seahawks have the lead in games, of course.
“We’ve never been this strong with this many guys who can compete and do things,” Carroll said of his running backs.
“Eddie has his way. Eddie’s going to run big and thick and tough. And so is Thomas …
“We know (Lacy’s) hard to play against. He’s got a nature about him that kind of sets the tone because he is so physical and he is so tough when he runs. We can’t wait to see when he’s at top speed, full speed, back at camp and we have the pads on and all that.”
All that begins this weekend.
