Todd Gurley had a breakout season during 2016. Recovering from a torn ACL during the offseason, it was hard to know how this rookie would return to the field. As he healed up, he sat out the first two weeks of the season. He was eased in during week 3 and in week 4 he took the league by storm. For the next 5 weeks Gurley averaged over 130 yards per game and ran in 4 touchdowns.
Quickly he became the Rams number one weapon looking fast, strong, and explosive on the field. They gave him their full workload right out of the gate averaging just under 20 carries per game throughout the season. It wasn’t until Week 10 when Gurley came back down to earth.
The Rams O-Line suffered some injuries and opposing defenses zoned in to Gurley as they could ignore St.Louis’ pathetic passing game. Constantly falling behind the Rams often had to abandon the run. Gurley’s average yards per carry and carries per game took took a significant drop. While he did still have a good game here or there the seed had been planted. Is the Rams offense so bad that it could dwarf all of Gurley’s talent?
The answer… certainly not. I think the worries surrounding Gurley can be easily dismissed. Not only has Gurley proved that he has what it takes to put the team on his back, but during the off season the Rams have made moves to improve their O-line. Gurley is going to be the teams running back and with their weak passing game they are going to run often. This year more than ever workload should factor into your decisions for running back. More and more teams are moving to a committee approach and the number of true work horses is getting smaller and smaller. Even if Gurley averages a bad 3.5 yards per carry he is liable to get well over 300 touches and clock in a 1000 yard season.
People will talk about how bad he was at the end of the year but how bad was he really? In the 13 games games Gurley played last year, he scored double digit fantasy points in 10 of them. In the games where he was given 10 or more carries, he scored double digit fantasy points 100% of the time.
Will his numbers slump? I don’t think so. I wont say that he will be the wrecking machine that he was at the start of the season but, his Sheer workload alone will give him a reliable floor, and its hard to imagine the Rams offense could get worse than last year. Gurely will fall somewhere in between his most dominate games and his weaker showings. Defenses will focus on him once again but he has the talent and opportunity to put up great numbers none the less. He is one of the safer running backs in the first round.