For the last five years, Todd Gurley handled the bulk of the work at running back for the Rams. He carried the ball at least 223 times each season since 2015, and in the last four years, he never played fewer than 71% of the offensive snaps.
He’s been the definition of a workhorse in Los Angeles, leading all NFL players with 1,483 touches since 2015. But now with Gurley out of the picture, the Rams will move forward with a different plan at running back.
It involves the four dreaded words for a fantasy football owner: “running back by committee.”
The Rams no longer want to feature one player in the backfield and instead plan to use a committee approach in 2020, led by Darrell Henderson and Malcolm Brown.
General manager Les Snead said Henderson is “probably a player with a bullseye on his back based on us releasing Todd,” but he’s not going to take over as the bell cow for Los Angeles.
“What we do want to be, and this will progress naturally, is certainly be a team that utilizes more than just one workhorse running the ball, have a different genre of skill sets and a complementary-type running game,” Snead said on a conference call Monday. “With that being said, you could get in Week 4 and there’s only one singular running back on the team who is playing extremely hot and maybe that person starts getting more carries. We have this big-picture vision of Darrell being a part of it, but we do expect other pieces to be a part of it, as well.”
For fantasy owners banking on Henderson becoming a top running back in 2020, this is bad news. His potential is obvious and the Rams clearly love his skill set – enough to trade up and draft him in the third round last year – but unless he comes out and dominates from the start, he’ll likely be sharing touches with Malcolm Brown.
Furthermore, the Rams could add another running back to the mix in the draft. They’ve been doing their homework on the incoming class of runners, meeting with Zack Moss, Darrynton Evans and Johnathan Kelley at the combine.
Sean McVay likes the versatility of the running backs in the draft and indicated that the Rams could select one at some point if the opportunity arises.
“As we move forward, there’s a lot of depth in this draft,” McVay said on the Rams Revealed podcast. “There are a lot of different types of players, they’re all really good football players that provide different skill sets and I would say that if we feel like the value and the type of player that we’re looking to add is there when we pick, that’s certainly a conversation that’ll come up.”
Also asked McVay about the possibility of adding to a RB room that currently includes D.Henderson and M.Brown. I'm sure you won't be surprised to hear that the #LARams could address that position group through the Draft. Podcast with his reactions to off-season moves coming soon. pic.twitter.com/skDkRloqAa
— J.B. Long (@JB_Long) April 6, 2020
Running back isn’t a pressing need for the Rams, since they did just select Henderson and have Brown also under contract, but it’s clear they’re looking to add depth to the roster at that spot.
Any further additions will hurt Henderson’s value, but if he stands above the rest in training camp and the preseason, the Rams will have no choice but to give him the bulk of the carries.
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