The Rams brought Tutu Atwell back, but through seven weeks they’ve barely acted like they meant it.
That’s the head-scratcher here. Los Angeles went out and reacquired the receiver from Miami, then had a perfect setup in Week 7 to put him to work with Davante Adams sidelined.
Instead, the offense rolled on without him. The Rams beat their opponent, Kyren Williams and Blake Corum kept the ground game humming, and still there were yards left on the table and points left on the board.
Puka Nacua did plenty, even while dealing with another injury, catching eight of 10 passes for 68 yards and a touchdown. But the Rams’ biggest completions all came in short bursts: 15-yard grabs to Colby Parkinson, Tyler Higbee and Konata Mumpfield. What the attack did not have was a true downfield threat, and Atwell never got the chance to be that piece.
That’s what makes the usage so puzzling. Atwell has been in Los Angeles since 2021, the same year Matthew Stafford arrived from Detroit.
Stafford has helped turn Cooper Kupp, Nacua and Adams into bigger parts of the passing game. Atwell, meanwhile, keeps waiting for a real crack at one.
This season, he has caught three of four targets for 31 yards. With Adams expected to miss 6-10 weeks and Nacua playing through injuries, Atwell should be the obvious next option. Instead, the Rams have kept him on the fringes, and no one seems to have a clean explanation.
He doesn’t need to be a featured receiver to matter, either. Atwell is not there to win snaps as a blocker.
He’s there because his speed changes how defenses line up. Just having him on the field can pull defensive backs deeper and help open space for the run game.
That matters even more if the Rams keep leaning into heavier personnel groupings.
And that ties into another problem: Nacua’s workload. He’s averaging 13 targets in five games, and that kind of pace can wear a player down fast. If the Rams keep asking him to carry the offense without Adams, they risk burning him out before the playoffs even arrive.
Atwell has done this before. When Kupp missed the first four games of 2022, Atwell stepped into a much bigger role and produced 22 catches on 35 targets for 270 yards and a touchdown over that stretch. Since then, he hasn’t come close to seeing that kind of volume again.
There’s also a fit here in the Rams’ heavier looks. Defenses respond to those formations by crowding the box and loading up against the run, which is exactly what helped Davis Allen score two touchdowns against the Las Vegas Raiders. Atwell’s speed can punish that kind of alignment, whether he’s the target or just the threat that forces defenders to back off.
Even if he never becomes the focal point, he can still force safeties and corners to stay honest, which opens the short and intermediate routes the tight ends rely on. And if defenses keep fewer bodies near the line of scrimmage, that only helps Williams and Corum find room to work.
For all that, Atwell has played just 87 offensive snaps and been targeted four times through Week 7. That doesn’t look like a usage plan. It looks like a player being held back for reasons nobody can quite explain.
So the Rams keep doing things their way, and everyone else is left wondering why they brought him back in the first place.
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