Fantasy Football Podcast - Who will be the Rams' RB1 in 2020?

With Darrell Henderson out with a hamstring injury, Yahoo Sports' Matt Harmon chats with Jourdan Rodrigue about the state of the Rams' backfield.

Video Transcript

MATT HARMON: I thought fantasy managers were way too bullish on Cam Akers coming out of the draft, like treating him as if he was going to be sort of the guy no questions asked, which is weird because Sean McVay has kind of said we plan on employing a committee approach. We plan on using all three of these guys.

I thought that the gap between Akers and Henderson just wasn't really justified based on what they were saying. I thought that gap would be closer. But now Henderson is banged up a little bit. That could give Akers some time to pull away. Where do you see these guys kind of fitting into this offense?

JOURDAN RODRIGUE: Let's say in a vacuum all three backs, Malcolm Brown, Darrell Henderson, Cam Akers are all healthy. I think Henderson and Akers get the lion's share of the carries with Malcolm Brown being more of the exclamation point at the end of the sentence. He's very good in short-yardage situations. He's very savvy. A power runner, he can go downhill if he needs to.

Probably at this point, a little bit better than the other two just because Cam Akers hasn't developed quite into the NFL body yet, right? Which is fair. I mean, it's not a knock on him. We know that.

So the thing is is Cam Akers is getting a crap-load of reps in camp, but it's not just with the ones. It's with the ones and the twos because they're making up for lost time on him. I know people are really, really excited about Cam. I'm excited about Cam.

I wrote a profile about his-- he is a legend in the state of Mississippi. I'm very excited to watch this guy play. However, it's truncating his onboarding into a very small window when normally you'd have six months. And so Darrell Henderson hurting his hamstring the other night really was a setback for this entire group.

Because not only are you now sort of adjusting the snaps because you're trying to onboard this rookie, but now you have to adjust them again because the guy you were going to lean on early in the year as you're onboarding that rookie is now dealing with a hamstring injury. And it's really finicky. So by mid-season, I think we're gonna see what these guys are gonna look like as a committee.

Right now, they have to do a lot of different kinds of adjusting. But I think at the end of the day, if you're looking at big picture body of work, I think Henderson and Akers are going to be your lead guys. I think they're gonna use Henderson a little bit more in the passing game at first, and then I think Cam Akers will get a little bit more of actual carries.

But by the end of the year, they're going to-- and I keep trying to predict this because I think it'll be so fun to see. I think you might see a little bit of an Ingram-Kamara situation with Henderson and Akers by the end of the season, and I think that would be really dynamic and exciting for Sean McVay's offense.