Mixon's year-long absence gets a destination but still no explanation
Joe Mixon, who ran for 1,034 yards and 13 touchdowns in 2024 with the Texans, sat out the entire 2025 season with a foot injury that no outlet in this coverage fully explains, then quietly signed with Seattle's practice squad. The NY Post called it a 'mysterious' absence; PFT and CBS Sports treated it as routine roster news. Nobody reported what the foot injury actually was, or why a productive 29-year-old back missed a full year. That gap is the story.
Joe Mixon signs with Seahawks' practice squad after year-long injury absence
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What happened
The Seattle Seahawks signed running back Joe Mixon to their practice squad, multiple outlets reported on October 5, 2026. Mixon, 29, missed the entire 2025 NFL season with a foot injury after a productive 2024 campaign with the Houston Texans, during which he rushed for over 1,000 yards and scored more than 10 touchdowns. Seattle is 3-1 but ranks near the middle of the league in rushing yards per game and yards per carry. Starting back Zach Charbonnet is currently on injured reserve, creating the roster need Mixon fills. Mixon joins on a practice squad deal, meaning he can be elevated to the active roster on a week-to-week basis. Three outlets covered the signing. What separates them is how much curiosity any of them brought to a year of unexplained absence.
The NY Post named the mystery; nobody investigated it
The NY Post was the only outlet to flag the strangeness of Mixon's 2025 absence, calling it a 'mysterious year-long injury' in its headline and describing the foot injury as something that 'kept him off the field for more than a year.' That framing is accurate and the right instinct. But the piece doesn't go further: no medical sourcing, no agent comment, no explanation of why a back who ran 1,000-plus yards in 2024 disappeared entirely. The observation is there. The reporting behind it isn't.
PFT and CBS Sports ran the transaction and moved on
ProFootballTalk and CBS Sports both covered the signing as a straightforward roster move. CBS Sports noted Mixon's 2024 production and the foot injury in the same sentence, framing the signing as a logical fit for a depleted backfield. PFT offered no context beyond the transaction itself. Neither outlet raised any question about the nature or duration of the injury. For a player who was a fantasy-relevant starter 18 months ago and then vanished, that's a thin file.
What one side told you that the other didn't
Nobody reported what the foot injury actually was.
All three outlets mention the foot injury. None of them name it: no fracture, no surgery, no Lisfranc, no timeline, no return-to-practice reporting. For a running back who missed an entire season, the medical specifics are directly relevant to whether this signing means anything for Seattle's offense. Readers are left with 'foot injury' as the full explanation for 12 months off the field.
Three outlets covered this. One asked a question. None answered it.
The NY Post's 'mysterious' framing is the only moment in this coverage where a reporter seems to notice that something doesn't quite add up about Mixon's absence. But the piece treats the mystery as color rather than as a reporting assignment. The result is that the most interesting thing about this signing — why a productive, relatively young back sat out an entire year — goes uninvestigated across all three outlets.
What to watch
If Mixon is elevated to Seattle's active roster before Charbonnet returns from IR, watch whether any outlet files a feature on the foot injury with actual medical or agent sourcing. A game-week elevation would create the news peg that practice squad signings rarely generate. If he plays well in even one game, the 2025 absence becomes a harder question to skip.
See how outlets across the political spectrum framed this differently — and what each side left out.