Big year for the Seahawks backfield, and it's not because of who's still there — it's because of who left. Kenneth Walker III, fresh off a Super Bowl MVP run, bolted for Kansas City in free agency after Seattle wouldn't meet his price. That left a gaping hole at running back, and the Seahawks used their first-round pick on Notre Dame's Jadarian Price to fill it.
Price didn't exactly have a clean runway into the job. He missed the preseason opener against Dallas with upper-leg soreness, then had to "ramp back up" through limited joint-practice reps before Seattle's second preseason game against Tennessee. But the flashes were loud enough — Sam Darnold called him a "special player" after watching him haul in an over-the-shoulder catch and rip off runs both inside and outside the tackles in that joint session.
That's apparently all the tape Macdonald and Schneider needed. Per Bob Condotta's Gregg Bell, the Seahawks brass has seen enough of Price's speed, his decisiveness cutting into outside-zone gaps and his hands out of the backfield to know he's the guy — and too valuable to risk banging around in preseason games that don't count, especially with the RB room already thinned by injuries.
That's a genuinely big vote of confidence for a rookie who missed the entire preseason opener. Teams don't pull a first-rounder from meaningless snaps unless they're already penciled in as the lead back — Price's college numbers (674 yards and 11 touchdowns on just 113 carries at a 6.0 yards-per-attempt clip his last season at Notre Dame) plus the pass-catching juice Macdonald's staff keeps raving about clearly closed the deal.
Fantasy managers are already circling him. Josh Norris of Yahoo Fantasy Football has reportedly been staking his claim on Price as the preseason rolls on, and this news only sharpens that read — a healthy rookie who's already earned lead-back trust from his own coaching staff before Week 1 is exactly the kind of profile that spikes ADP in a hurry.
The deeper we get into the preseason, the more @JoshNorris is planting his flag on Jadarian Price 🚩 https://t.co/HRU1DmDjp8
None of this guarantees Price walks into Week 1 as a workhorse — George Holani and the rest of that thinned-out room will still eat into the touches. But shutting a rookie down for the final two preseason games because you already trust him in real reps is about as loud a signal as a coaching staff can send without saying his name in the same breath as a starting job. Seattle's clearly moving on from the Walker era, and Price looks like the answer.