Gurley leading NFL in touchdowns heading into bye may be biggest surprise for Rams

After all of the struggles from a year ago, who would have thought Los Angeles Rams running back Todd Gurley would lead the NFL in touchdowns heading into the bye week?

With the Los Angeles Rams finishing at the bottom of the league last year by only averaging 14 points per game, Todd Gurley was the unfortunate victim of receiving harsh criticism due to the struggles on offense, especially after failing to record a single 100-yard rushing game. But with a poor offensive line to go along with one of the weakest receiving corps in the league, no Rams fan should have been truly surprised to see Gurley struggle the way he did in 2016.

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Not to mention, with Los Angeles finding themselves trailing in a majority of the games, the offense wasn’t using Gurley as much to run the football, so it’s easy to understand why his numbers were down for the most part. This time around, however, Gurley has been one of the players who has benefitted the most from the first year under Sean McVay thanks to the head coach focusing on improving the offensive line and group of receivers in the offseason.

In fact, Gurley has been playing at such a high level for Los Angeles, the running back actually leads the entire league in touchdowns heading into the bye week, which nobody would have predicted back at the beginning of the season. Not only has Gurley found the end zone five times on the ground as a rusher, but the former Georgia has also caught three touchdown passes from Jared Goff, giving him a total of eight through seven games.

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Assuming Gurley continues to play at this pace once the team returns from the bye, chances are the Rams running back will find his name in the conversation for the MVP award when the time comes. For all the critics who said Gurley wasn’t the right fit for Los Angeles at running back, isn’t it amazing how quickly things can change in a year?