Ready or not, Tutu Atwell’s time for LA Rams is suddenly: Now

The training wheels are coming off for Tutu

So now is the time for Tutu Atwell to finally and formally debut for the LA Rams, right? Hey, he’s been a rookie for seven games already. Hasn’t he been gotten some yards already? Not, not at all. But then again, he hasn’t exactly gotten many opportunities, has he? Let’s take a look, shall we? Of course, to do that, we must rely upon the experts at Pro Football Reference and their table below.

The LA Rams tend to bench rookies and leave them there for a majority of their first NFL season until circumstances change significantly. In some cases, the rookie can become so good that he cannot be contained on the bench any longer, and he will see the football field. In other cases, injury or poor play from the starter forces the team to promote a rookie to take over.

Take the rookie season of Van Jefferson as an example. After his first two games of moderate usage, rookie Van Jefferson was on the football field for 8,3,18,3,3,14,13,4, and finally 0 offensive snaps in Weeks 3-11. This year, he is getting his share of the work.

The Rams have already jettisoned the veteran inside linebacker Kenny Young in the thinly-veiled guise of clearing just-in-case salary cap space. The result is an unexpected and overnight promotion of backup rookie inside linebacker Ernest Jones to the full-throttle starter in the middle of the defense.  It appears that a similar crash-course promotion is happening to teammate rookie wide receiver Tutu Atwell.

Now the question is, how well will the rookies handle the mini-spotlight?