3 reasons why Matthew Stafford can go without a strong rushing attack

I: Rams have adequate running backs

While the world eagerly anticipated RB Cam Akers’s debut as the featured running back in 2021, he was a third of the three-headed running attack from 2020. Veteran Malcolm Brown has since signed on with the Miami Dolphins and Darrell Henderson Jr. remains on the Rams roster. But behind those three rushers, the Rams also had RBs Xavier Jones and Raymond Calais on the same 53-man roster. Not the practice squad, mind you. They were both on the 2020 active 53-man roster.

Depth charts are curious means of structuring a team’s player ranking. It’s a basic rote structure. Nothing more. Yet so many fans interpret a player who serves on a reserve role in some immensely undervalued status. It’s almost as though there are only two states of being on an NFL roster: Starter and “You must suck!”. That’s not how it works. Rams head coach Sean McVay is eager to see how well the team’s young roster handles this situation.

The reality is that the margin between the starter and the backup can be very close. Clearly, if you examine the 2020 performance of RB Darrell Henderson and RB Cam Akers, their performances were very close. It was Akers late surge, while Henderson was on JR, that sealed his projection for the starter in 2021. That same margin of difference (or lack thereof) could be the difference between Akers and Xavier Jones, or Raymond Calais, or Jake Funk, or even Otis Anderson.

Depth charts are binary code. 1 or 0. That’s it. There was no real opportunity to assess just how good Xavier Jones was last season. Head coach Sean McVay was impressed with his performance. Aaron Donald was impressed with his performance too. But without preseason games to witness it for ourselves, we remained skeptical. Let’s face it, when it comes to young football players, many of us wear the mantle of “Doubting Thomas” with pride.

NFL teams have discovered that a great running back is not where the player is drafted, but rather how the player is coached, and the quality of blocking in front of him. Somewhere among the five remaining healthy running backs, there are enough horses on this roster to get the job done. The Rams are not frantically negotiating to bring in a veteran RB. I think one of the Rams’ current RBs steps up in a huge way this year. Xavier Jones perhaps?