Kyren Williams keeps piling up production, and somehow the respect still doesn’t quite match it.
That tension showed up again in PFF’s latest running back rankings, where the Los Angeles Rams back landed only 10th in a field of 32. For a player who has finished fifth in rushing yards on average over the past three seasons, that placement feels awfully light.
Part of the explanation is obvious enough. Williams isn’t being graded like Bijan Robinson, Jahmyr Gibbs, or Christian McCaffrey, the three backs ranked ahead of him in the top four who bring more value as pass-catchers.
Williams does catch the ball - he had 36 receptions for 281 yards and three touchdowns last season, and he owns a 74 percent career catch rate - but that’s not the main part of his job. He’s also one of the Rams’ better blitz pick-up backs, which keeps him closer to the quarterback than the route tree.
That’s the kind of work that doesn’t always pop in rankings, but it matters.
The Rams took Williams from Notre Dame in the fifth round of the 2022 NFL Draft, and he’s turned into one of the more productive Day 3 finds of the last four draft classes. Since 2023, he’s averaged more than 1,200 rushing yards and 12 rushing touchdowns per season. For a player listed 10th, that’s a pretty loud résumé.
He doesn’t win with size. He doesn’t win with pure speed.
He wins by being relentlessly useful, and the Rams keep leaning on him because of it. Even with a meaningful share of carries going to backup Blake Corum, Williams stayed firmly in the mix as one of the league’s top volume backs.
That’s the part that keeps making the ranking feel off. In a Rams offense that keeps shifting around him, Williams remains one of the central pieces.
Few backs can say that. Williams can.
And he’s still being treated like he has more to prove.
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