A criticism that Rams general manager Les Snead has rarely managed to evade is how he’s used draft picks to acquire more running backs for L.A.‘s roster. Whether it was using a top-10 pick on Todd Gurley or year over year day 2 picks on Darrell Henderson and Cam Akers, Snead has refused to stray from his belief that running backs matter. But other than a couple of phenomenal seasons by Gurley — minus the bad contract extension decision — Snead hasn’t hit on those picks. Until now.
With 249 yards rushing
against the Arizona Cardinals in Week 14, the Rams are moving on the ground like they haven’t matriculated in years. In fact, it’s only the second time that L.A. has rushed for 200 yards in a game since 2019 and it’s the most rushing yards that the Rams have had in a single game since they had 269 (against the Cardinals) in Week 16 of the 2018 season.
But deeper than the numbers, it wasn’t just how many rushing yards L.A. had — it was how they got there. With 2 of the league’s best running backs going into the home stretch of the season and specifically Blake Corum, one of those “questionable picks” who has now rushed for over 10 yards per carry in each of the last two games.
As if the Rams needed another weapon on offense, they got one without having to make a midseason move. As JB Scott pointed out on Monday morning, Corum had 45 yards after contact and four runs over 10 yards, finishing with a career-best 128 yards and 2 touchdowns in the win.
This did nothing to take away from Kyren Williams, Snead’s other running back steal in the draft recently, who had 84 yards, a touchdown, and 6.5 yards per carry. Over his last six games, Williams is averaging 5.4 yards per carry, 80 yards per game, 1 touchdown per game, and most importantly he hasn’t fumbled since Week 5.
If you paced Williams’ last six games over 17 games, he’d have 1,360 rushing yards and 17 touchdowns and that’s even with Corum’s addition to the backfield by Sean McVay in the last month.
Corum played in just 22% of the snaps in the first six games and never went over 30%.
But in the last seven games, Corum is averaging 32.8% of the snaps and he’s been over 30% in all but one of those. The only time he had less, the Rams blew out the Saints 34-10 and he had 27.5%.
Corum is averaging 5.5 yards per carry in that time frame.
As the Rams enter the home stretch of the season as arguably the best team in the NFL, they can’t let up or give anything on their margin for error because it just so happens that the Seattle Seahawks are right there with them neck-and-neck in every respect (L.A. and Seattle are 1-2 in point differential and 1-2 in points allowed in the last eight games) and have the same 10-3 record with a huge Thursday Night game next week.
So to add Corum to an already-loaded depth chart on offense makes the Rams look even more dangerous headed into the battle for the NFC’s number one seed:
- Matthew Stafford has NFL-best 35 TD and only 4 INT (113.1 rating)
- Puka Nacua has NFL-best 93 catches with 1,186 yards and 6 TD
- Davante Adams has NFL-best 14 TD catches with 718 yards
- Kyren Williams has 952 rushing yards and scored 11 touchdowns
- Corum is now up to 550 rushing yards and 4 TD
- Colby Parkinson has scored 4 touchdowns in the last 5 games
How remarkable is it that a couple of months ago we were arguing about the importance of Tutu Atwell? Now falling behind Xavier Smith and Konata Mumpfield, Atwell isn’t even one of Stafford’s top-10 options.
Corum’s additional snaps was relatively quiet at first, but now it’s too loud to ignore. The Rams had a Pro Bowl running back already, now they could have two.
