George Holani

George Holani scored two Half-PPR points a game last year, the profile of a deep backup you would never draft — and yet this might be the most interesting last-round running back in the range, because the Seattle backfield just cracked wide open. Pick two-twenty-four, running back sixty-nine, is the market pricing the depth role he had and ignoring the opening in front of him.

The season, on Half-PPR scoring: ten games, twenty-two carries for seventy-three yards, a couple of catches, one score, before a hamstring sent him to injured reserve for the stretch run. Two-point-oh points a game — deep-reserve territory, the fourth or fifth option in a loaded room. There is no case to make from the production itself; every ounce of interest here is about who is no longer standing in front of him.

The career is two quiet seasons as a Seattle special-teamer and emergency back — undrafted out of Boise State, useful, unheralded, a body the staff trusts more than the box score suggests. Nothing in the file says featured runner; plenty in it says the coaches like him.

The pattern beat has to abstain — twenty-two carries is not a sample any of our patterns can condition on, in either direction. So we skip to the structural truth this whole episode turns on: deep-backfield value is almost entirely a function of the depth chart above it, and Seattle's depth chart just lost its top two backs in the same offseason.

The situation is the opening, and it is a big one. Kenneth Walker left for Kansas City in free agency — the reigning Super Bowl MVP, simply gone. Zach Charbonnet tore his ACL in the divisional round in January, had surgery in February, and is expected to open the season on the reserve list, with a late-July check-up that will tell the real story, per ESPN. Seattle drafted Jadarian Price at pick thirty-two to be the lead back, and the beat expects the rookie to start — but through all of spring practice, the coverage had Holani taking the most first-team running-back reps of anyone in the room, with Emanuel Wilson and Kenny McIntosh also competing. Brian Fleury runs the offense now, in for Klint Kubiak, with a mandate to maintain exactly what won the title. For Holani specifically, the logic is simple: the fewer healthy bodies ahead of him when the season opens, the more a special-teamer the staff already trusts gets a real look on early downs.

The price: running back sixty-nine at pick two-twenty-four. The slot paid three-point-four a game last season; he produced two-point-oh. Our verdict: watchlist. The production says fade, and on the production alone we would — but a defending champion with its top two backs gone, a rookie easing into the pros, and Holani reportedly leading the early reps is a genuine early-season opportunity at a last-round price. The caveat is the calendar: if Charbonnet is healthy by September or the rookie seizes the room outright, Holani is depth again by October; if the injury lingers into the fall, there are real early-down and passing-down snaps to be had for whoever is next in line.

Watch the late-July Charbonnet check-up first — it decides how many touches are even available — then the camp order among Holani, Wilson, and McIntosh, and how quickly Seattle is willing to trust a rookie with a real workload. Two points a game says nothing about twenty-twenty-six; the depth chart says everything. He's one of your guys? This show covers your whole roster — every player, every week, all season.