LOS ANGELES — Kyren Williams takes pride in his ability to impact the game on all three fronts that a running back should: Running, receiving and blocking. Despite maintaining that philosophy, the Rams running back decided to attack the offseason – before and during training camp – differently than how he has in the past.
"I would do a lot of receiver workouts and do a lot of different things because I want to be as versatile as I can, but this year I honed in on really training to be a running back," Williams said on Saturday at Rams Training Camp presented by CommunityAmerica Credit Union at LMU.
The last three seasons, Williams has been in the top-9 in the NFL in rushing yards and touchdowns in all of the last three seasons with over 1,100 yards and 10 touchdowns in each, and over 1,250 yards in the last two seasons.
"For me, as a running back, I want to practice continuing (to have) my pad level low," Williams said. "When contact arrives, I drive my feet so I can come out of the tackles and create those learning reps so when the game comes, it's natural, it's easy, and that's something I've been doing since the beginning of camp and even before then. To me, it's creating those little habits and details that allow us all to be successful."
What working on his pad levels, cuts and sinking his body, can help with going into this season is continuing to boost his yards-after-contact metric. Williams had either 2.0 or 1.9 yards after contact in the last three seasons, which hovers right around the league average in those years, according to pro football reference.
Despite the level of consistency each of the last three years, Williams feels like there a new level he can reach in the running game while continuing to build his receiving resume. He also set a career-high 281 receiving yards and tied his previous-best three receiving touchdowns last season.
While he normally spends the offseason working with the wide receivers to maintain that versatility, as he mentioned, he also appreciated having the ability to focus on only one thing this offseason, which he described as "super nice."
"I always try to be the most versatile I can, so doing a lot of different workouts, a lot of different drills," Williams said. "It's cool and all, but just being able to focus on what it is I do at a high level, that was fun."
More than anything, Williams was just happy to be back getting to work at Rams Training Camp.
"Camp has been fun," Williams said. "I was telling (head coach Sean McVay) earlier today camp doesn't feel like it's practice and we're working. To me, it feels like it's all a workout. We're all working out here to get better. We're having fun bonding with the guys on the field, off the field."
