RENTON, Wash. -- Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll said Monday that he'd like to get Thomas Rawls a lot of work in Week 1, but he's still going to be cautious with the second-year running back who is coming off of offseason ankle surgery.

"He's ready in the next couple weeks to get back in where he can start a game, take a game over and do all of the things that he can do," Carroll said. "It's still time to take care of him as we get him back. He only carried the ball a couple times so far. But he's done everything we could ask of him. He's had an extraordinary offseason of hard work. Everybody admires the heck out of him. He was here every day throughout the entire offseason getting ready and just did a great job. So it's a great accomplishment for him. And he looks like he's at full speed, ready to go."

Rawls suffered a season-ending ankle injury in December. He started training camp on the PUP list, but returned to practice on Aug. 7 and has been a full participant in recent weeks. Rawls got a couple of carries in the final preseason game Thursday night.

Carroll reiterated that Rawls is the starter when healthy, but he was somewhat cautious when discussing his Week 1 role.

"We’re just making progress with him," Carroll said. "You don’t want to rush him. This is his second preseason game in a sense, as far as relative to the other guys. So we’ll see how he does. I’d love for him to carry the ball quite a bit in this game, and then we’ll know where we stand going into the next week. It’s just really bringing him along properly and carefully. We want to make sure we take care of him."

Christine Michael was the star of the summer for the Seahawks. Both he and Rawls will be a part of the rushing attack Sunday.

Later in the week, their respective roles might become clearer. But it's also possible that the coaches need to see how Rawls looks early in the game against the Dolphins before determining how much they want to use him.