Joe Mixon, Pro Bowl Veteran, Starts His Seahawks Comeback on the Practice Squad

Joe Mixon could have let his career end quietly. A Pro Bowl running back cut loose by Houston after a foot injury erased an entire season, he had become the kind of name that drifts toward retirement without anyone announcing it. Instead he is joining the Seattle Seahawks on their practice squad, the lowest rung of an NFL roster, and the choice says more about him than about the depth chart he lands on.

Most of the coverage has read the move from Seattle’s side: a team short of runners grabbing the best name left on the street, plus a fantasy question about whether he is worth a waiver claim. Both are fair. They skip the part that belongs to Mixon, a back who last played as a Pro Bowler and is now choosing to audition again, at an age when running backs are usually shown the door.

The season that disappeared

Mixon did not fade out. His last game came in Houston’s playoff run in January 2025, at the end of a first Texans season in which he rushed for 1,016 yards and 11 touchdowns and made the second Pro Bowl of his career, after the one he earned with Cincinnati in 2021. When he vanished from the field, he was coming off one of his best years.

Then the foot. The injury surfaced before training camp, away from the team, and the Texans never fully explained it; Seattle Sports still calls it mysterious. He spent all of 2025 off the field, had surgery to repair the foot in February, according to Pro Football Rumors, and was released in March. The spring passed, then the summer, then the first weeks of this season, and he stayed unsigned. Pro Football Rumors put it plainly: it had looked likely he would not play in the NFL again.

The first sign that Mixon saw it differently came from an unlikely place. A promotional video for his sock company, OneSock, ended with him saying: “I’m back, baby!” Within days, Fox’s Jay Glazer reported that he was visiting Seattle. One workout later, the Seahawks were filing the paperwork.

Seattle needed him for reasons that have nothing to do with sentiment. Kenneth Walker III left in free agency, first-round pick Jadarian Price went on injured reserve with a chest injury, and Zach Charbonnet is still working back from the ACL tear he suffered in last season’s playoffs. Head coach Mike Macdonald did not dress it up: “We’re down runners. We need running backs. He’s a good running back.”

That last sentence is the whole contract. A practice-squad deal lets Seattle elevate Mixon to the game-day roster up to three times before it has to sign him to the 53-man roster, as Pro Football Rumors notes. Each elevation is an exam. Houston once traded for him and handed him a multimillion-dollar extension; now he is back to proving he belongs on a Sunday.

Should you add Joe Mixon in fantasy?

The fantasy crowd wants a yes or no, and the honest answer is a patient maybe. Emanuel Wilson is Seattle’s lead back right now, with George Holani behind him and Velus Jones Jr. as the third option. NBC Sports’ fantasy desk wrote that it would not rush to plug Mixon into lineups, expecting Wilson to keep the lead role while the veteran gets up to speed. Pro Football Network called him “a highly speculative add”: worth a claim, not a big slice of your free-agent budget.

The calendar is crowded too. Charbonnet is expected back first, with Pro Football Network projecting a return around Weeks 6 or 7, and ESPN reports he will not debut against San Francisco this weekend. Price is out until at least Week 8, a game against Chicago. Mixon starts on the practice squad, with any immediate field time on hold while he works back into shape, as OutKick put it.

The practical read: in deeper leagues with a dead bench spot, he is a reasonable stash. In shallow leagues, watch the elevations. The first time Seattle promotes him for a game will tell you more than any workout report.

Mixon arrives with 7,428 career rushing yards, 60 rushing touchdowns and five 1,000-yard seasons, most of them across seven years with the Bengals, who drafted him in the second round in 2017. Scouts had graded him as first-round talent; his slide was tied to a 2014 assault case at Oklahoma that he resolved with a plea. He is 30.

Running backs rarely get to choose how they leave. By taking the smallest offer Seattle could make, Mixon has at least chosen how he tries to stay: one elevation at a time, on a foot nobody has seen tested in a game for almost two years.

Tags: running backs, Seattle Seahawks, Joe Mixon, Mike Macdonald, Zach Charbonnet