Seahawks hope Zach Charbonnet, Kenny McIntosh will secure running back corps

When the Seahawks opened the door to their running back room during rookie minicamp last week, in walked “The Terminator” and “The Blueprint.”

Or, as they are more commonly known, Zach Charbonnet and Kenny McIntosh.

Charbonnet, a second-round pick, earned The Terminator nickname from teammates in his days at UCLA for his punishing running style.

“He wears people out,” Seahawks general manager John Schneider said on draft day of the 6-1, 214-pound Charbonnet, who led the Pac-12 with an average of 135.9 rushing yards per game last season, which was also fourth among FBS schools.

McIntosh, meanwhile, earned the nickname The Blueprint from a public address announcer during his days playing for the Vikings in an 80-pound youth league at Fort Lauderdale (Florida) Lakes Park. 

The PA announcer’s name was meant to suggest that McIntosh can do it all as a running back, thus being The Blueprint for a player at that position. 

“We had an announcer who just gave everyone nicknames,” McIntosh explained last week. “I got ‘The Blueprint.’ It stuck with me.”

McIntosh liked it enough that he got it tattooed on his arm a few years ago, and his mother, Kyria, has named her courier business The Blueprint Pick-Up & Delivery Service.

The Seahawks hope that together, the two will give the team the kind of running back depth it has been seeking since basically Marshawn Lynch’s last full year in 2014 but has gotten only sporadically.

In that sense, maybe together they could be tabbed “The Insurance Company,” as well, with Seattle taking each to beef up a running back corps that consisted of just two players entering the draft — Kenneth Walker III and DeeJay Dallas.

Charbonnet obviously represents the much bigger investment, taken 52^nd overall, the third-highest pick spent on a running back in the draft, and the fifth highest in Seahawks history.

That Seattle drafted Walker 41^st overall in 2022 had some questioning the Seahawks using a second-round pick on a running back in two straight seasons, especially given the increasingly en vogue thought that running backs aren’t worth a high draft pick, in part due to what are often short career spans.

The Seahawks’ counter to that is that it’s worth it to them given the way they want to play to assure they always have a capable running back to call on.

A memory that remains fresh is the 2019 season, when the Seahawks started 10-2 and 11-3 and were in realistic position to get the first overall seed in the NFC playoffs before losing running backs Rashaad Penny, Chris Carson and C.J. Prosise to season-ending injuries in the span of three weeks.

That forced Seattle to bring back Marshawn Lynch out of apparent retirement, as well as Robert Turbin, for the final regular-season game and the playoffs, where the Seahawks lost in the divisional round and three of their final four games overall.

Even with the addition of Walker last year to pair with Penny, Seattle faced injury issues down the stretch.

Penny was lost for the season with an injury in Week Five, which made Walker the lead back. But Walker was injured in a late-season win at Los Angeles and missed a game the following week against Carolina. In the only game Seattle played last year without at least one of Penny or Walker, the Seahawks were held to 46 yards rushing — their third-lowest total of the season — in a 30-24 home overtime loss.

So, you try to tell the Seahawks that running backs don’t matter.

Their hope is that adding Charbonnet and McIntosh to the returning duo of Walker and Dallas will mean the Seahawks can avoid being caught short-handed at running back at any point in the season, but especially late in the year when injuries most tend to creep up.

“I have so much respect for that position and so much regard for what that weighs into our football team and how we play and the mentality and all of that,” Carroll said after the draft on Seattle Sports 710 AM. “It’s a really important spot for me, too.”

The Seahawks can also argue that their own history shows that there can be a pretty big difference in what a team gets out of a running back taken highly in the draft from those taken in later rounds.

True, Seattle has had some success with mid-to-late-round running backs, notably Chris Warren (fourth round, 1990) and Carson (seventh, 2017).

But of the top six leading rushers in team history who are running backs, all but Carson were selected in the top 45 of the draft — three by the Seahawks themselves (Curt Warner, third, 1983; John L. Williams, 15^th, 1986; Shaun Alexander, 19^th, 200); and two players Seattle later acquired via trade or free agency in Lynch (12^th by Buffalo in 2007) and Ricky Watters (45^th by 49ers in 1991).

Penny’s injury-filled history after being taken 27^th overall can be viewed as the argument against taking a running back with a high pick. But Penny also left Seattle as the franchise’s career leader in yards per carry, 5.7, indicating that the first-round pick investment would have been well worth if it he’d stayed healthy — and it’s worth remembering he’d never had any significant injury history before coming to Seattle.

The Seahawks, in fact, considered taking Charbonnet at 37, where they instead selected Auburn edge Derick Hall, with Schneider saying later, “I was very surprised he lasted that long.”

But if Charbonnet was the priority pick to make the Seahawks comfortable with their depth at running back, McIntosh was the late-round flyer who Seattle hopes will pay off and make the position that much stronger.

McIntosh, the leading rusher for national champion Georgia last season, thought he might go as high as the third round.

Instead, he lasted to 237 out of 259 overall picks, having already begun to have discussions with other teams about signing as an undrafted free agent before Seattle picked him.

Seattle’s call famously set off a raucous celebration in the McIntosh household, with McIntosh’s voice still shaky with emotion when he talked to reporters roughly 20 minutes later.

That McIntosh ran a 4.62 40 at the scouting combine — third slowest of the 15 running backs who ran official 40s there — likely led to his draft day fall. But that also has McIntosh vowing to prove to the rest of the NFL that they got it wrong.

“Yeah, very disappointed,” McIntosh said last weekend at Seattle’s minicamp. “Because I know what type of talent I bring to the table. I know what type of back I am. I know I had a bad combine — I can stay that. I can admit that. But seventh round, that is just outrageous in my eyes.”

The Seahawks hope it turns into a Carson-like steal — Carson, recall, fell in part due to injury concerns, limited to 82 carries his final season at Oklahoma State.

And for all the talk of Seattle’s draft investment in running backs the last few years, having a running back room in which the top four are all on rookie contracts means the Seahawks are currently only committing just over $6 million in cap space to the position this year, less than all but three other teams, allowing for more significant financial investments elsewhere.

“That group is shaping up really nicely,” Carroll said after the draft. 

With a definite emphasis on group.