Kenneth Walker never had a chance

Walker and Zach Charbonnet were in the same situation, but didn't have the same opportunities

Zach Charbonnet averaged exactly twice as many yards per carry BEFORE contact as Kenneth Walker did in Seattle’s loss to the 49ers in Week 1:

• Charbonnet averaged 3.9 yards before contact

• Walker averaged 1.8 yards before contact

Stats like these always need more context and can often fluctuate from source-to-source, but these numbers do reflect the eye test if also noticed that Walker had much less room to run on Sunday than Charbonnet did. Was that a product of Klint Kubiak’s playcalling, the different situational needs for each running back, bad luck, or a combination of all three?

Yes.

According to Pro-Football-Reference advanced stats, Charbonnet’s 3.9 YBC average was tied as the sixth-best of Week 1 among all running backs who had at least 10 carries:

• Zach Charbonnet had 12 carries for 47 yards, 3.9 YPC, 4 first downs

An interesting comparison comes from the opposing team, as 49ers backup Brian Robinson, Jr. was next on the list with 3.7 yards before contact against Seattle’s defense, whereas Christian McCaffrey wasn’t far behind at 3.1. For whatever reason, San Francisco’s offense gave the two backs rather equal footing.

That wasn’t the case for Walker.

The league average in Week 1 was 3.4 yards before contact but you won’t find Walker’s name until you scroll down to a tie for 41st with Jonathan Taylor and Chuba Hubbard:

• Kenneth Walker had 10 carries for 20 yards, 2.0 YPC, 0 first downs

By this comparison — that Charbonnet averaged twice as many yards per carry and had all the first down runs — many fans have wondered why Seattle should continue to give Walker carries at all. Or to at least give Charbonnet “the starting job”, which is not a very good point right now because Charbonnet out-snapped Walker 30 to 21.

That could be because Walker was absent for part of training camp and Charbonnet is less injury prone, but for now we have no reason to think that Seahawks coaches haven’t already made a change or — and this is more likely — that Mike Macdonald and Klint Kubiak will change their minds week to week. Or quarter-to-quarter:

But do we even need to know more about Walker’s struggles in Week 1 than “Seattle wasn’t blocking for him”? Here is a clip of his runs, tell me what he should have done differently.

Where did Walker go wrong?

As I said, these numbers do fluctuate from source to source and Josh Norris actually had Walker at a much worse 0.3 YBC. Whatever source Norris uses also had Charbonnet at 1.5 YBC, so over a full yard better than Walker.

And here’s where it gets even more interesting:

PFR didn’t give Charbonnet any yards after contact. They only gave Walker 2 YAC, but still more than Charbonnet. Is this accurate? That’s tough to say right now and doesn’t seem 100% accurate, but the yards before contact difference is exactly what I saw on Sunday.

DougAnalytics posted this graph on Monday comparing running backs by Yards After and Before Contact.

This isn’t the full graph, I’m just trying to give readers as clear of a view of Walker and Charbonnet as possible while keeping the axes. Walker is bottom left and Charbonnet is almost exactly where the two red hash lines for “NFL average” meet:

Walker’s total yards before contact is 0, down around Tank Bigsby (who was traded on Tuesday), compared to about 16 or 17 by Charbonnet. Contrary to PFR, this also has more yards after contact by both running backs with Charbonnet slightly outgaining Walker in that respect. The NFL’s website NFL Pro has Charbonnet at 2.7 YAC compared to 2.0 YAC for Walker.

Over at NextGenStats, Walker’s -21 Rushing Yards Over Expectation is the third-worst of Week 1 (McCaffrey’s -25 is the worst) and Charbonnet is still below average at -2.

And at NFL Pro, Charbonnet’s 66.7% success rate was the highest mark in the NFL in Week 1, compared to 30% (29th) for Walker. But this number is going to be heavily influenced by first downs and first down runs are heavily influenced by blocking and play calling.

Hey, nobody should be mad that the Charbonnet plays worked sometimes, but at the same time let’s be honest about the running game and the run blocking in general against the 49ers: It wasn’t very good. And for that reason, I’m not going to give up on Kenneth Walker after one game in which the blocking failed him.

Another comparison is runs outside the tackles:

• Charbonnet: 6 carries for 23 yards (3.8)

• Walker: 5 carries for 14 yards (2.8)

Inside the tackles:

• Charbonnet: 6 carries for 24 yards (4.0)

• Walker: 5 carries for 6 yards (1.2)

Stacked Box (8+ defenders):

• Charbonnet: 3 carries for 7 yards (2.3)

• Walker: 2 carries for -1 yard (-0.5)

Neutral Box (7 defenders):

• Charbonnet: 5 carries for 24 yards (4.8)

• Walker: 6 carries for 17 yards (2.8)

These comparisons between the two backs all reflect what we saw on Sunday, which is that runs were more successful when Charbonnet was in the game. However, I could not find how stats that reflect the run blocking in any of these situations and that’s where I think it becomes clear that Walker did not get a level playing field despite them both playing against the same defense and behind the same offensive line.

For whatever reason, these bad rushing stats from Walker inside or outside the tackle both both clearly represent what I saw on Sunday:

Kenneth Walker had absolutely nowhere to run.

We only have one week to go off of so far, but the Steelers allowed the fourth-most rushing yards in the NFL, which was 182 of them to the Jets. And Breece Hall, the only running back drafted ahead of Walker in 2022, averaged 2.9 yards before contact. Like anyone else, when Hall gets 3 yards before contact he’s going to look like the running back he was drafted to become.

Whether or not Walker will do the same in Week 2 remains to be seen, but I know it won’t happen if the Seahawks stifle his development and continue to call running plays behind Anthony Bradford.

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Largentium: Was week 1 the general idea of what the offense is going to be? Because if it is, that approach is not going to win games. No aggression, no pounding the defense, no use of TEs, no play-action equals no wins. If this is the approach going forward, let's clean house and hire an offensive coach that has a pair. Yesterday was just Pete redux and I'm sick of that approach. I'm normally not that negative based on one game, but they should have won that game and it wouldn't surprise me if that's the loss that keeps the team out of the playoffs because it was the most winnable. The Hawks are riding a very narrow edge to make the playoffs and they've already slipped once.

Yeah, I think the one thing that nobody expects from Klint Kubiak is for the Seahawks to run one play action pass attempt per game. (That one call gained 21 yards, by the way.)

The four quarterbacks who ran the most play action all won their games (Daniel Jones, Aaron Rodgers, Baker Mayfield, Matthew Stafford) but obviously if you’re calling that much play action then you’re probably having a pretty balanced day as a football team already. The Seahawks were not balanced or “complementary” (as Macdonald said he wanted to be) in almost any respect.

I think Sam Darnold was good, I think the pass protection was good, and that’s at least a step in the right direction. I think the play calling may have actually been an overcorrection of last year’s hesitation to run the ball by Ryan Grubb. According to this chart, the Seahawks threw the ball 15% less often than the expectation based on down, distance and situation, putting them way off of the average:

Kubiak maybe tried so hard to get the run going that it ultimately ended up being his undoing because Seattle did a pisspoor job of run blocking at certain spots. (Grey Zabel still looked pretty fantastic, although Alexandre Castro fairly points out that he was struggling against the stunts.)

The Offensive Line has better players than last season because they have Zabel and Abe Lucas is back, but is the Offensive Line better than last season? Maybe that did not happen as early as Week 1.

I really hesitate to judge any player or team with much force until we get to October because there are so many variables at play that influence a game and a gameplan week-to-week based on opponent and environment.

Was this a bad start for Kubiak’s offense? It was a bad start for Kubiak’s offense. But there were some positives there, like encouraging play from Darnold, a dominant showing from Jaxon Smith-Njigba minus a few negative moments, and reason for optimism as a pass protecting unit. Maybe Bradford doesn’t start 17 games and maybe there’s a time when Cooper Kupp shows up or loses to snaps to someone who will, like Tory Horton, Jake Bobo, or Dareke Young.

You’re also right, this loss could end up costing the Seahawks in the most serious of ways when the playoff picture is finalized. We’ll just have to wait and find out. Some teams that looked really good in Week 1 will end up missing the playoffs and they have no idea yet.

I’ll cover the rest of the Super Joes questions in an upcoming newsletter!

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