What player has more at stake personally in Super Bowl 60 than Kenneth Walker?
The Seahawk with the most at stake, personally, in the Super Bowl sits alone.
Amid a swarm of reporters and camera seeking stories, one of the most compelling one is parked at a round table.
George Holani, the third-string running back(?), is getting more attention at the table.
Brady Russell is the special-teams captain with long, flowing hair who likes to warm up shirtless on the field before games. He has a videography team around him on the other side of the table.
Kenneth Walker, his navy-blue, number-9 Seahawks jersey on over a white, long-sleeve shirt? He just sits back. He watches the scene that’s all around him, and definitely not at him, inside the San Jose Convention Center, days before Super Bowl 60. “I’d have to talk more than I’m used to,” Walker tells The News Tribune, smiling.
More than he wants to, too.
No player in this Super Bowl has more to gain more immediately than Walker.
When the Super Bowl ends Sunday night, he becomes unemployed.
This biggest game of them all is the final game of Walker’s contract. Seahawks general manager John Schneider has not extended their lead running back the last four seasons beyond his rookie deal.
Has the team offered or even approached Walker about a new contract.
“Not that I know of,” Walker told the TNT this week at the Super Bowl.
That’s the same thing he said last summer.
“I feel like we’ve been more focused on the season and winning the Super Bowl,” Walker said.
He’s still only 25 years old. He is in what should be his physical prime. Walker rushed for 1,027 yards in 17 games this regular season. That was despite a job share with Zach Charbonnet. This was the first time since Seattle drafted him in the second round out of Michigan State in 2022 that Walker played every regular-season game.
He’s been even better in the playoffs. He plowed the 49ers for 119 yards and three touchdowns in the Seahawks’ 41-6 smashing of San Francisco in the divisional round. Walker joined Shaun Alexander from 2004 as the only Seahawks to rush for three touchdowns in a postseason game.
He had 111 total yards and another rushing TD in the NFC championship game against the Los Angeles Rams. Walker has joined Hall-of-Fame company. He, Terrell Davis from 1997 and Jerry Rice from 1988 are the only NFL players to average at least 125 total yards from scrimmage and at least two touchdowns in two or more games of a single postseason.
The lead back role is all Walker’s for the Super Bowl. Charbonnet, who has one more year remaining on his rookie contract, tore knee ligaments in the first playoff game. His season is over.
Offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak’s game plan Sunday against the New England Patriots for the NFL title is likely to be the same it’s been in the first 19 games, 16 of them Seahawks wins: Run, run, then run some more. That’s to set up Sam Darnold for what the Pro Bowl quarterback does best: play-action passes off running plays.
Kubiak ran 50% of the time this season, third-most in the NFL a tick behind Buffalo and Baltimore. Seattle spent most of the season above 50% and running the most often in the league.
And that was with Walker AND Charbonnet.
Now, with an estimated 200 million people — including every one of the 32 general managers in the NFL— watching on television worldwide Sunday, it’s all Walker.
Yet after the Super Bowl he is unsigned. He says he’s not thinking about that.
“The mindset is: Keep the main thing the main thing,” Walker said.
The Todd Gurley Syndrome
Walker and most of the league’s running backs ending their rookie contracts are victims of the NFL’s Todd Gurley Syndrome.
Gurley was the league’s offensive player of the year for rushing for 1,305 yards and a league-leading 13 touchdowns as the Rams’ lead back in 2017. He was, like Walker is now, 25 years old when L.A. gave him a four-year contract extension worth $57.5 million. The Rams did that with two years still remaining on his existing contract.
Gurley had knee issues before that, and more of them after he re-signed. He never played a full season in the league. The Rams started reducing his playing time because of his knee concerns the year they signed him to the big-bucks deal. By the time Los Angeles made the Super Bowl that season, Gurley was a reduced player.
His playing time and production dipped amid more injury issues in the 2019 season. By the spring of 2020 they’d seen, and paid, enough. The Rams released Gurley in March 2020. They did that while still owing him a $7.55 million roster bonus for the 2020 season, and with a $20.15 million dead-money charge to their salary cap with him no longer on the team.
They paid Gurley $34.5 million for two reduced, injury-marred seasons. He played one more season, less than half the snaps for the Atlanta Falcons in 2020. Then he was out of football. Career over, at age 26.
Since then, and even before, teams often have been hesitant to pay big dollars to running backs. It’s the most-injured position in the sport. It has the shortest average NFL career span, less than three seasons.
GMs would rather draft new, younger, cheaper running backs (Charbonnet) and play them on rookie contracts, in a cycle of one cheaper, younger one after another, then extend ones with four years of NFL banging piled onto their bodies (Walker).
But for these Seahawks, Charbonnet may not be on a field practicing again until into training camp next summer, if then. They don’t know.
They know Walker. They know what he can do in Kubiak’s and offensive line coach John Benton’s outside-zone scheme.
But Kubiak is about to become the new head coach of the Las Vegas Raiders after this Super Bowl. It’s not inconceivable he takes Benton with him; they worked together two seasons ago in New Orleans.
Kenneth Walker’s value
Walker’s market value is $8.4 million per season right now, per spotrac. It could grow.
In an eye toward what’s coming after this game, Walker last month fired his agents he’d had since he entered the league. He hired David Canter and his Florida-based Aura Sports Group.
Another big game from Walker in the biggest game is going to earn him millions if not tens of millions next season and perhaps beyond, for someone. Will it be the Seahawks?
They limited him from August into January, trying to manage him through a foot issue related to the high-ankle sprain that ended his 2024 weeks early. Charbonnet spent much of the season with a higher percentage of offensive snaps than Walker. Kubiak and coach Mike Macdonald often replaced Walker with Charbonnet in short yardage, in 2-minute drills and near the goal line. That’s how Charbonnet scored 12 rushing touchdowns, the most for Seattle since Marshawn Lynch in 2014.
That was far from the optimal way for Walker to maximize his value in a contract season.
Somebody’s going to sign the lead running back in the Super Bowl for next season. Will it be the one that drafted him, the only one he’s known in the NFL? Last week, The News Tribune asked Schneider what Walker’s late-season surge and playoff production has shown him about the running back’s future beyond the Super Bowl?
“For his future?” Schneider said.
“Ken has been awesome... Maybe a little bit more decisive the last month and a half.
“He’s a free agent. We’d love to have him back.”
The Seahawks have from after the Super Bowl Sunday night to free agency’s negotiating period beginning March 9 to get a deal done with Walker, if they indeed do want him back.
What is Walker’s gut feeling? Will he return? Will he test the free-agent market for the first time in March?
“I don’t have no feeling,” Walker said. “I haven’t thought about it.
“I’m only thinking about the team, and the Super Bowl.
“After that, then it’s time to think about stuff.”
This story was originally published February 6, 2026 at 5:00 AM with the headline "What player has more at stake personally in Super Bowl 60 than Kenneth Walker?."