Field Gulls
In 2022 Ken Walker burst onto the scene for the Seattle Seahawks, rushing for 1,050 yards and nine touchdowns during his rookie campaign.
However, in the two seasons since Walker has failed to exceed the lofty expectations laid out by that splash performance, and in Week 1 against the San Francisco 49ers he was outsnapped by third year running back Zach Charbonnet.
The question for many fans was exactly how and why Walker saw the field less than Charbonnet, and why it appeared that the offensive line opted to not block when Walker had the ball. The answer to those questions, as has been the case for most of Walker’s career, falls largely at the feet of the fact that Walker consistently failed to operate within the system and run within the play design.
For reference, here’s a compilation of many of Walker’s runs from the matchup against the 49ers.
Before diving into the specifics of a couple of those plays, it’s first necessary to understand the basics of running in a wide zone system in order to understand what is being asked of the running backs.
Specifically, in outside zone a running back’s job is to proceed to a certain point, read the alignment of a pair of defenders, plant and go based on those reads. The three choices include two options to the play side or a cutback, and are roughly illustrated in the image below.
There is no thinking involved, as which of the three paths for the running back to follow is dictated by the alignment of the defenders at the time the read is made. The defenders being read in this situation are those being blocked by Abe Lucas and Robbie Ouzts, and the read is based on whether the defender is inside or outside of the blocker.
The short version of the decision tree is as follows:
That’s it. The running back looks at the position of the two defenders relative to the blockers, makes the read, commits and goes. There is no changing of the read if the defenders adjust and change positioning. The job of the running back once they make the read and start down a path is to attack that path.
In the image above Ouzts has inside position and Lucas has outside position on the 49ers they are blocking, making the read to attack between the two, or in other words to follow the middle arrow.
Walker appears to make the proper initial read and plants to attack between Ouzts and Lucas.
The play design now calls for Walker to run between Ouzts and Lucas and forget about the other two options because they effectively no longer exist.
This is Ken Walker we’re talking about, though, and...
