No, the Seahawks shouldn’t sign Melvin Gordon

Veteran working again Melvin Gordon, one of many stars of the 2022 Seattle Seahawks season, was waived by the Denver Broncos on Monday and has since cleared waivers to grow to be a free agent.

Gordon has helped the Seahawks’ draft inventory tremendously by repeatedly fumbling in crucial conditions, most notably on the aim line towards Seattle on opening night time after which close to the aim line in final Sunday’s loss to the Las Vegas Raiders. Melvin has fumbled 5 instances in simply 115 touches and likewise has three drops as a go goal. Fumble quantity 5 was an excessive amount of for Denver to tolerate they usually selected to half methods.

There was some chatter amongst Seahawks followers on-line about the potential for bringing Gordon in as an insurance coverage again, with the hope that the teaching workers can repair his ball safety points. Evidently Seattle has sniffed round for extra RB depth, having put in an unsuccessful waiver claim for lately launched ex-Cardinal Eno Benjamin.

On the danger of sounding silly: No.

Right here’s two minutes price of motive to not signal Melvin Gordon.

This isn’t a current downside that’s surfaced out of nowhere; Gordon is a profession fumbler with out Adrian Peterson’s productiveness. Since coming into the NFL in 2015 he’s fumbled an astounding 26 instances, which is greater than some other working again within the league. He had simply two fumbles from 2017-2018 however has racked up 16 over the previous 4 seasons.

Gordon has spent over half of his profession failing to crack 4 yards per try and this 12 months his longest run in 2022 is 17 yards. He’s going to be 30 years outdated in a couple of months and given his incapacity to hold onto the ball he isn’t to be trusted even in small pattern sizes.

Pete Carroll gave Chris Carson numerous leeway when he had a brutal stretch of fumbles in 2019 however that proved to be the outlier on his profession. Alex Collins didn’t get the identical good thing about the doubt. Carroll has a low tolerance for turnovers and even decrease when mentioned participant isn’t performing to a excessive commonplace. No matter ails Gordon is not going to be mounted in a half-season and he has far more potential to harm the staff he’s on than assist.

Past Kenneth Walker III, Seattle already has DeeJay Dallas and Travis Homer on the roster, each of whom are greater than able to getting carries on this offense. If there are any accidents of notice they’ve two working backs (Godwin Igwebuike and Darwin Thompson) on the follow squad, and there are in all probability different road free brokers who can go a recreation with out being an enormous turnover danger. Apart from, Seattle fumbles sufficient as is — tied for 2nd most misplaced fumbles with 8 — and it doesn’t want so as to add a persistent fumbler.

If the Seahawks do get one other working again on a budget for depth functions, then so be it. There isn’t a probability Gordon finally ends up on this roster nor ought to he.