5 years agoCam Akers in, Todd Gurley out. While the Rams did trade up in the third round of the 2019 draft to select Darrell Henderson, it seems as if the plan was never to utilize him as their front-end starter from how his 2019 season went along with this selection of Akers in the second round of the 2020 draft. Henderson is more than likely a complementary/change-of-pace back to Akers who will be the presumed starter of the future. Akers may have to beat out "elder" RB Malcolm Brown for the starting running back job in camp but that should not be much of a problem given that Brown is not as skilled. Akers is a former top RB recruit who chose to attend Florida State at the beginning of their demise under Willie Taggart. The team was a mess, especially on offense where they could not block a JV high school defense if their lives depended on it. FSU's offensive line ranked as one of the two worst in all of the FBS according to the website, football outsiders and their QB situation was ugly. At first, there was hope with Deondre Francois but he got hurt and James Blackmon was just an abomination. Francois returned and was terrible which led to a return to Blackmon. All-in-all, Akers was at a massive disadvantage playing in the FSU offense and still manage to average five yards-per-carry in college while looking like a stud as a receiving back. Akers has 4.4~ speed and is tough to bring down on the first contact when he has a hole, he is fully able to burst through and hitting a home-run play. The Rams offensive line is unfortunately below average but on the bright side, it is hard to have a worse running game than last year where their running attack, led by Todd Gurley had the second-lowest yards created by the running backs alone. Akers is an instant improvement and should receive a heavy workload from Day 1. He is worth drafting around his ADP in redrafts and can be reached for around early if RBs are thin.--Kev Mahserejian