WATCH: Kenneth Walker III rips off 74-yard touchdown run to finish off LA Chargers
Seattle Seahawks rookie running back Kenneth Walker III hasn’t taken very long at all to make a splash in the National Football League. The former superstar running back for the Michigan State Spartans has taken the league by storm during his first few games. He continues to make some of the best athletes on the planet look remarkably average. On Sunday, he finished off the LA Chargers with a backbreaking 74-yard touchdown run late in the fourth quarter.
Check it out below.
He looked really fast on that run. It’s clear that he’s going to be a star in the NFL for many years to come. The touchdown score put the Seahawks up 37-16 and put the game completely out of reach for the Chargers. Seattle would go on to win the game, 37-23.
It was the longest offensive play of the 2022-2023 season for the Seattle Seahawks. Walker dominated on Sunday–finishing with 23 carries for 168 rushing yards (7.3 yards per carry) and two touchdowns.
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Simply put, he’s been the running back many people expected he would be this season. A few weeks ago, against the New Orleans Saints, his backfield mate Rashad Penny was injured in the third quarter. Penny was carted off after suffering a fractured fibula, according to Ian Rapoport. He had season-ending surgery a few weeks ago. That has opened up more opportunities for Walker the past few weeks and he’ll be a featured piece in the Seahawks’ offensive attack moving forward. If he keeps it up, he’ll likely be a front runner for NFL Rookie of the Year honors.
Walker had been dealing with an injury of his own early in training camp, which he had to get surgically repaired in the middle of August. The exact type of procedure he had done is a little cloudy, as Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll went back and forth on the wording of it. A day after he had his procedure, Carroll said it did not involve a hernia or core muscle tissue. The gifted tailback was selected in the second round of the 2022 NFL Draft (No. 41 overall selection).
Kenneth Walker III was one of the best running backs in college football during the 2021-2022 season
Walker began his collegiate career at Wake Forest. There, he rushed for 579 yards and four touchdowns as a freshman in 2019 and 579 yards and 13 touchdowns in 2020 as a sophomore. Ahead of his junior year, Walker entered the transfer portal and ended up at Michigan State. With the Spartans, Walker became one of the best offensive players in the nation, rushing for 1,636 yards and 18 touchdowns, averaging 6.2 yards per carry.
On3’s Jonathan Wagner also contributed to this article.