Welcome to another edition of Thunderdome! Hand-to-hand, no jury, no appeal, no parole: two men enter, one man leaves. Or at least something like that.

When the Seattle Seahawks turned in their selection of Zach Charbonnet at the 52nd overall pick in the 2023 NFL Draft a couple weeks ago, they completed a nearly-unprecedented combination of transactions that saw them nab running backs in the second round in back-to-back seasons. Since the turn of the century, there have been just seven other instances of franchises selecting runners in the second round twice in the span of even three years:

Even among these teams, the Seahawks’ consecutive selections of Kenneth Walker and Charbonnet are somewhat unique. To start, the respective running back-heavy second-round stretches for the Titans both took place during times of front office transition: LenDale White was selected by a regime led by general manager Floyd Reese, while Mike Reinfeldt held that position when the team took Chris Henry the following year. Similarly, Bishop Sankey was drafted by Ruston Webster and Derrick Henry by Jon Robinson. Both Walker and Charbonnet were drafted by John Schneider, who’s been the general manager in Seattle since 2010.

The Walker-Charbonnet picks are also unique in that Charbonnet isn’t really (or at least doesn’t seem to be) serving as some sort of do-over on a recent busted pick or as a replacement for a since-departed player. Carlos Hyde was drafted by the 49ers after LaMichael James totaled just 229 yards from scrimmage in the two years since his own selection, D’Andre Swift was drafted by the Lions after Kerryon Johnson flamed out with a combination of inefficient play (he averaged 3.57 yards per carry in 2019) and knee injuries, Derrick Henry was drafted by the Titans after Bishop Sankey averaged fewer than 40 scrimmage yards per game across his first two seasons, and Maurice Jones-Drew was drafted by the Jaguars after Greg Jones converted to fullback in the midst of averaging 3.46 yards per carry across 2004 and 2005. On the other end of things, Tatum Bell was drafted by the Broncos after Clinton Portis was traded to Washington in exchange for cornerback Champ Bailey, and even Chris Henry was drafted by the then-new Reinfeldt regime after the Titans released Travis Henry, who’d run for over 1200 yards as the team’s starting tailback in 2006, as well as after White posted just 304 yards from scrimmage as a rookie. Walker was productive last season and is also still on the team, making none of these situations particularly comparable to the Seahawks’ selection of Charbonnet.

Tatum Bell was drafted to replace Clinton Portis, who’d been traded to Washington after rushing for over 3000 yards in two years with the Broncos.

Perhaps the cleanest point of comparison for Seattle’s picks are Cincinnati’s selections of Giovani Bernard and Jeremy Hill in back-to-back drafts. Bernard was taken within four picks of where Walker would eventually go, he was coming off a 1200-scrimmage yard season in which he caught 56 passes, scored 8 touchdowns, and finished third in Offensive Rookie of the Year voting, and the team still grabbed Jeremy Hill in the mid-second round the next offseason, presumably (and with the benefit of hindsight, definitely) to serve as the early-down thumper half of a two-headed backfield. Walker is coming off a 1200-scrimmage yard season in which he scored 9 touchdowns and finished second in Offensive Rookie of the Year voting, and after Wake Forest, Michigan State, and Seattle simply didn’t use their running backs in the passing game during any season with Walker on those respective rosters, the Seahawks grabbed Charbonnet in the mid-second round, presumably (though, acknowledging the rarity of such a combination of picks and the redundancy of much of the two players’ skill-sets, not definitely) to serve as the pass-catching half of a two-headed backfield.

How that two-man situation shakes out is probably unpredictable, but predicting the unpredictable is the business I’m in. Let’s explore how the respective strengths and weaknesses of Walker and Charbonnet could interact in creating some sort of workload split.

After a good college career capped off by a dominant junior season, Walker was somewhat of a disappointment on a per-carry basis as a first-year pro in 2022:

Anecdotally, many of Walker’s difficulties on the ground seemed to come from a hair-on-fire running style that saw him chasing big plays at the expense of reliable output, but even his overall efficiency wasn’t great. Schematic adjustments don’t look to be the culprit of such subpar numbers, as after his workload at Michigan State was made up of 67.6% zone runs, the Seattle offense called zone runs at a nearly-identical rate of 64.6% in 2022, and given some late-season improvement in his performance, I’m tentatively willing to chalk up Walker’s up-and-down rookie year to growing pains. According to Tej Seth of Sumer Sports’ Rushing Yards Over Expected model, the young runner was leaving value on the field through much of last season before turning things around by the time he reached the 140-carry threshold:

We’re dealing with small samples as we hone in on relatively short stretches of apparent improvement here, but that period of positive accumulation of RYOE coincides with Walker’s late-season stretch of 90 carries for 401 yards in a four-game span that included three 100-yard rushing performances in the fantasy playoffs. Given that such a turnaround matches with our priors that regarded Walker as the best pure runner in last year’s draft class, I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt going into his sophomore campaign, though with the caveat that continued struggles should weigh heavily in our minds after he was objectively unimpressive as a first-year ball-carrier on aggregate.

While he struggled a bit as a rookie in the NFL, there’s no doubt that Walker was a more effective runner in college than Charbonnet was:

That’s not to say that Charbonnet was bad in college, because he wasn’t, but Walker’s own early-career growing pains should serve to sober our expectations for the kind of success that even the best amateur backs will see in the NFL.

The aforementioned zone-heaviness of the Seattle running game could compound that learning curve for Charbonnet. Now on a team that runs zone nearly two-thirds of the time, the UCLA product and former Michigan Wolverine had a workload made up of just 53.1% zone attempts last year, 51.6% zone attempts for his career, and 48% zone attempts in my film-charting from his final season. In that latter sample, Charbonnet performed as follows relative to the other fifteen runners in the 2023 class for whom I charted a significant amount of runs:

While already not bad, if Charbonnet can clean up some of the ancillary decision-making issues that drag down his overall performance on zone concepts, I think he has the potential to be a very good zone runner who challenges Walker for a decent (though probably not majority) portion of early-down work in Seattle. In particular, his tracking on those plays (and even more frequently on gap runs) is often negatively impactful, representing a prominent bug in his game that I address in greater detail in this article from late March.

For now, Charbonnet’s production as a receiver combined with the post-draft comments made by Pete Carroll and John Schneider indicate that this team envisions a passing-down role for their rookie runner. I’m not sure such a role will offer much fantasy utility in this offense.

I discussed Charbonnet’s mostly-dumpoff-fueled receiving numbers in detail in this article from early February, and the general skinny on his skills as a pass-catcher is that -- outside some vague indications of competence on angle and out routes -- he’s probably somewhere on the Leonard Fournette-spectrum as a rudimentary compass back who will provide value in pass-protection while mostly orbiting Geno Smith as a checkdown option near the line of scrimmage. Despite reliable hands that should make him a fine fit in that role, Charbonnet was not a target hog on a per-route basis in college, and historically, even the primary pass-catching running back in offensive coordinator Shane Waldron’s offenses have not enjoyed high-volume work as receivers.

Going back to his 2018-20 stint as the passing game coordinator on Sean McVay’s Rams teams, the following backs have led Waldron offenses in total targets on a seasonal basis, listed with their target totals, snap shares, and route participation rates:

Outside of a prime Todd Gurley playing nearly every snap (according to playerprofiler.com, Alvin Kamara led the league with an 80.1% snap share last season) and running a large majority of routes (that 75% participation rate is in the 99th percentile among all backs since 2016), no Waldron running back has ever earned enough targets to make much of a dent in their degree of fantasy relevance -- even Charbonnet’s 78th-percentile college Catch Rate of 83.3% would see him catch just 41 passes on Gurley’s 49 targets from 2019, and there’s almost no way that Charbonnet comes anywhere close to a 74% snap share or 54% route participation rate without a long-term Walker injury.

There’s also not much reason to expect Charbonnet to be peppered with targets on a per-route basis in this offense where other backs have not been. His RATE marks on both basic and advanced route types hovered right around CFB-wide averages over the course of his college career (103.3% and 95.5%, respectively, relative to the baseline mean of 100%), and backs playing either with Geno Smith or for Waldron have been well below NFL-wide averages since at least 2016, as far back as my per-route numbers (courtesy of Sports Info Solutions) go:

None of those numbers exceed the 39th percentile. For Charbonnet to post receiving numbers that make him useful in fantasy football, long-established tendencies for himself and each of the quarterback and play-caller in this offense will need to change.

Because of that, we’re left with a best-case scenario (for Charbonnet specifically) in which Walker either gets hurt or gets beat out for early-down work by a back who was far less impressive as a collegiate runner than he was, and a worst-case scenario in which Walker continues his late-season ascent back to the form he showed at Michigan State and keeps Charbonnet relegated to breather-back and pass-blocking duty. For Walker, our best-case scenario involves hoping he can be one of the most efficient ball-carriers in the league in order to offset an erroneously-hyped receiving profile that resulted in his team already having drafted a role player to supplement his own lack of ability in that area (Walker averaged a 64th-ranked 4.71 yards per target last season after coming into the league with historically low receiving numbers), and the worst-case scenario involves continued struggles on the ground that result in something close to a 50/50 early-down split with Charbonnet.

For my money, Walker is still overpriced as the now-RB8 over at KeepTradeCut following a tumble from his pre-Draft valuation as the RB4. I’m still excited about his prospects as a high-level NFL rusher, but even Nick Chubb has maxed out as the RB7 in PPR points per game as a dominant two-down back with all-time great per-carry output. Threading the needle on elite production is just hard when you don’t contribute much in the passing game.

Charbonnet remains interesting given his baseline competence on third downs contributing to contingent upside as a bellcow on a good offense in the event that Walker ever goes down for a significant stretch, but landing on a team with a talented young running back who was selected just the year prior is a gut punch to the idea that he’d produce regular fantasy utility during his rookie contract (and maybe ever). I also believe he’s a bit overvalued as the current RB22 over at KTC.

In this episode of Thunderdome, nobody wins and nobody leaves, creating a liminal space of hypothetical and mutually exclusive upside where our contenders beat the snot out of each other for the next three years with little promise of Tomorrow-Morrowland or the knowin’ they left behind.