Thomas Rawls

Running back Thomas Rawls will be ready for the start of the season, tight end Jimmy Graham could be, and the Seahawks did not like the idea of two personal fouls resulting in an ejection.

On how Thomas Rawls is doing in his recovery: “He’s doing really well. He should be fine and we anticipate that he’ll be fully recovered and ready to go at least by the time the season starts and hopefully by camp. Thomas had a terrific season. He just came out of nowhere and most people, they didn’t have any idea what he was going to do. He brought us attitude and style of play that we like. He was really physical and really tough, so we’re thrilled to have him coming back and we need to get him some help. Christine Michael re-signed with us which is a good thing; Christine did his best job of playing football for us in the short stint that he had. So those two guys will be the one-two punch right now and we’ll see where we go from there.”

On Jimmy Graham: “I’m communicating with Jimmy regularly. He should be fine. It is a substantial recovery. He’s doing great and he’s doing everything he needs to do, and he’s really competitive about it. We’re anticipating that he’ll come back and again we hope to have him by the start of the season. We’ll see how it goes as far as camp and all of that, but he’s an incredible football player and a great team member and we’re thrilled to have him on our club. We were just getting going with Jimmy last year, so we’ll be really excited to get him back in the lineup.”

Carroll sounded more optimistic about Rawls being ready for camp than he did of Graham. With Marshawn Lynch out of the way, Rawls is first in line for workhorse back duties given his performance in 2015. In the six games in which Rawls played and Lynch did not, the rookie averaged 20.5 touches for 120 yards and 0.84 touchdowns (on a stellar 5.6 YPC). That doesn't even include Week 3, when he turned 16 carries into 104 yards while Lynch was limited to five carries. Michael may form a "1-2 punch" with Rawls but we expect that Rawls will get the clear majority of the carries.