RENTON — Turns out, the Seattle Seahawks are serious about fixing the running game this year.
So serious, they surprised just about everyone by trading down nine spots in Round 1 then drafted San Diego State All-American running back Rashaad Penny with the 27th pick in the NFL draft on Thursday night.
Coach Pete Carroll said days after last season ended with Seattle out of the playoffs for the first time in six years his first priority was improving the rushing offense. The most direct ways to do that: get better runners, and better blockers for those runners.
Then Carroll and the Seahawks made Penny just the third running back the team has drafted in the first round.
The others: Curt Warner, Shaun Alexander.
“It was fun as hell,” Carroll said Thursday night. “We had a blast tonight.”
The coach almost skipped into the team’s defensive meeting room to talk to the media. As soon as he sat and before all cameras were rolling Carroll said, preemptively: “I don’t mind saying it: I’m jacked about this pick!”
Penny sounded as wowed as he was thrilled.
“We didn’t expect this. It’s amazing,” Penny said Thursday night from his draft party with about 50 people packed into his home in Norwalk, California.
“The mocks and the predictions, they don’t mean anything. This is real. I am just so blessed right now!”
Yes, most predictions before the draft figured Penny as a second-round choice on Friday. He was rated behind Derrius Guice of LSU, Ronald Jones of USC and Sony Michel from Georgia. All three of those backs were still on the board at 27.
The Seahawks obviously didn’t rate Penny that way. They made him the second running back taken in the draft. Penn State’s wondrous Saquon Barkley went second hours earlier, to the New York Giants.
Michel got drafted by New England four spots after Seattle took Penny.
Penny, 5-feet-11 and 220 pounds, led the nation with 2,248 yards rushing yards with 23 touchdowns last season for the Aztecs. He is a physical back with 4.46 speed in the 40-yard dash. He’s known as a guy who seeks to run through holes and over people rather than away from them.
He did all that at San Diego State in his only season starting there, as a senior last fall. He spent years as the backup to Donnell Pumphrey, who left SDSU as college football’s career rushing leader. An attraction to the Seahawks: Penny has less wear than most college runners entering the NFL; he had only 613 career touches in college, hundreds fewer than most backs who leave as seniors.
With team owner Paul Allen at Carroll’s right in the Seahawks’ draft room, the Seahawks made a first-round pick instead of trading all the way out of it for only the second time in the last six years.
As for it being a runner over the new pass-rusher and cornerback they need to start this season: Seattle’s running backs were 32nd in the league last season in rushing yards produced. The days of quarterback Russell Wilson leading the team in rushing, by hundreds of yards, must end.
“I can do whatever it takes to win a game, that’s for sure. That’s what I am going to bring to Seattle,” Penny said.
“I want to bring that team back to where it was a few years ago…I want to thank everyone in that organization for trusting me.
“They need a guy to come in and help. I’m the right guy for that. … I think that’s why they picked me.”
The Seahawks had a grand total of one rushing touchdown last season — by a converted wide receiver, J.D. McKissic.
Penny joins Chris Carson, the 2017 seventh-round pick returning from a broken leg and ankle-ligament injuries, former practice-squad player Mike Davis and often-injured C.J. Prosise as true running backs in the Seahawks’ backfield. And Prosise was a wide receiver for most of his time at Notre Dame before the Seahawks drafted him in the third round in 2016.
Earlier Thursday evening, Seattle made a trade involving its first-round pick for the seventh consecutive year. General manager John Schneider made a deal with his former employers in Green Bay to move down from the 18th pick to the 27th in Round 1. The Seahawks also gained a third-round choice they were missing and a sixth-round pick they also did not have entering the draft.
The official deal: Seattle traded the 18th pick plus a seventh-round selection (248th overall) to Green Bay for the 27th pick in round one, a third-round choice (76) and sixth-round pick (186).
Seattle went from eight to nine picks in this draft, and get in rounds it wasn’t in before Thursday. The eight that would have tied 2015 for their fewest choices in a draft under Schneider and Carroll.
Thursday’s deal down was the 55th trade involving at least one draft choice in the nine years Carroll and Schneider have been running the Seahawks.
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