The Seahawks didn’t appear to suffer any serious injuries in Sunday’s game at Arizona, but they did come out of their Week 7 loss with some injuries that could affect availability in the short-term, particularly at running back.
Chris Carson left the game in the first half with a foot sprain that has him “week to week,” Seahawks coach Pete Carroll said, while Travis Homer was unable to finish due to a knee bruise. Carlos Hyde handled lead-back duties in Carson’s absence and played well, but he’s now dealing with hamstring tightness.
“Chris has a mid-food sprain, there something there we could see (on the MRI), so we just have to go week-to-week and see what happens,” Carroll said. “He was real determined to say ‘I can go with it,’ but we won’t know until the end of the week for sure.”
Carroll added that Homer, who also handles kick returns, “has a bruised knee, not a knee injury, so that’s something he has a chance to recover from.”
When talking about Hyde’s productive game, Carroll added to the end of his answer, “if Carlos is available to us, which we’re hoping he is, then we feel like we can keep the tempo going if Chris can’t make it.” Asked later about that statement, Carroll clarified that Hyde came out of the game with hamstring tightness: “He did have a little tightness in the hammy that we’re watching.”
While none of the players mentioned above have been ruled out for Sunday’s game as of now, those injuries do mean that rookie DeeJay Dallas is the only fully healthy back on the roster, and if more than one of those three backs were unavailable, the Seahawks would be pretty thin at running back when they play the 49ers on Sunday. Further complicating the issue is that, due to COVID-19 protocols call for free agents to go through a six-day entry testing process before they can practice, meaning even if they brought a player in on Monday, that player could not practice the entire week.
“It’s really difficult,” Carroll said of adding outside help that could play the same week. “This is really difficult to do that, to get guys in here in time where they could actually practice and have a chance to even be familiar with taking the handoff. So we have some things that we can do if we need to. We’re going to take it one day at a time and see if our guys can get back in who can get back, with a couple of creative thoughts going forward that will keep in-house for now.”
The Seahawks should get a big boost at running back at some point soon when Rashaad Penny comes off of the physically unable to perform list, but that isn’t likely to happen this week seeing as Penny has not yet returned to practice. ‘
“I saw him working out today, and he looked pretty good,” Carroll said. “That’s on the docs, we’ve got to wait and see what they say. I don’t have the timeline on that. But he was working out on the grass and he was running hard today, so he’s getting close.”
