Perhaps the most surprising news to come out of cutdown day for the Los Angeles Rams was Sean McVay’s announcement that Kyren Williams will be the team’s punt returner. Williams returned punts early in the 2023 season and has experience as a kick returner, but now that he’s viewed as the bell cow, it was an unexpected decision from the Rams’ coaching staff.
Fantasy managers are naturally panicking about what this means for Williams’ status as the starting running back and the possibility that Blake Corum will overtake him on the depth chart at some point this year. McVay is painting it as a way to get one of the team’s best players more involved, but it’s also risky because of the chance of injury.
Williams spoke about the decision for the first time Thursday and he’s unsurprisingly embracing it. Being the ultimate competitor and team player that he is, Williams is excited about the chance to make plays in another area of the game.
“Being who I am. Like you just said, I get to make more plays so I feel like I’m going to be able to show everybody else what more I can do in this game of football,” Williams said. “Being able to play in a lot of green grass and have a lot of space and get good blocks from my jammers up front to get those punts started. I’m excited to be able to show another phase of football that I can play.”
Williams has some experience as a return specialist, both in college and the NFL. He also played baseball as a kid so he’s comfortable tracking the ball and fielding it.
“I’ve been catching punts,” he said. “I feel like that’s something I do naturally. I played baseball as a young kid so tracking the ball in the flight, that’s not really difficult to me or catching the ball or anything like that.
“I did a little bit of it last year, as well so I have some experience in the NFL doing it so I’m excited to be able to make more plays.”
The Rams tried several players on kickoff and punt returns this offseason, including Blake Corum, Tutu Atwell and Ronnie Rivers. Williams is seemingly the player McVay is most comfortable with back there, so he’ll at least get the first crack at it this season.
It didn’t come as a surprise to the star running back, either. McVay told him at the start of camp that he needs to practice returning punts because if no one else secured the job, he wanted Williams to be the guy back there.
“I think it was the coach’s decision mostly because I remember at the beginning of camp, Coach McVay came up to me and said, ‘Make sure you’re catching punts. If it comes down to it, I want you being the guy,’” Williams said. “So that’s what he told me from the beginning of camp. So I knew in a way there could be a chance of this and when the 53 came out and Coach made the decision that I was going to be the starter, it wasn’t a surprise to me.”
We’ll see how this decision works out for not only the Rams as a team, but for Williams’ workload in the backfield. It’s undoubtedly surprising and unorthodox to have your bell cow running back returning punts, but McVay is confident in Williams’ playmaking ability.