LAR · RB
Projected Points (PPR)
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Kyren Williams sits atop the Los Angeles Rams depth chart, with Blake Corum listed as the backup. Through the two games of the new season he is playing 59.3% of the offense's snaps, down from the 68.4% share he carried across the full 2025 slate, but the touch profile has not changed in any way that should worry a manager. He has twenty-three carries for one hundred twenty-six yards, a 5.5 yards-per-carry mark, and six of those carries have come in the red zone already, a share consistent with the fifty-one red zone totes he handled over seventeen games last year. He is also seeing work through the air, five targets turned into five receptions for thirty-six yards and a touchdown, mirroring the low-volume, high-conversion receiving role he held in 2025 when he caught thirty-six of fifty targets. This is a back who is not heavily featured as a receiver but is trusted near the goal line, which is where his fantasy scoring is built. The surrounding cast explains why the passing game so often bypasses him: Puka Nacua and Davante Adams are the primary targets in the passing attack, and Matthew Stafford is spreading the ball to his receivers rather than checking down. That leaves the ground game and goal-line work as Williams's lane, and so far the coaching staff has kept feeding him there.
The case for Kyren Williams starts with usage that has barely moved. He finished 2025 with 259 carries, 1,252 yards, ten rushing touchdowns and 263.3 PPR points across seventeen games, a ninth-place finish among running backs, and the early returns this season track almost exactly that pace: 15.6 points per game now against 15.5 points per game then. His six red zone carries in two games project to a season total in line with last year's fifty-one, and touchdown-dependent backs need that kind of proximity to work, which he clearly still has. The receiving numbers are modest, thirty-six receptions on fifty targets in 2025 and five-for-five so far this year, but the efficiency on those looks has been high, and a back who converts nearly every target he sees does not need heavy volume there to matter. The case against him is built on the snap count. A drop from 68.4% of the offense's snaps to 59.3% is not nothing, and if that trend continues across a larger sample, it opens the door for Blake Corum to siphon early-down work or short-yardage opportunities that would otherwise belong to Williams. Backs who lose snaps gradually often lose touches gradually too, even when a two-game stretch still looks strong on the surface. There is also the matter of efficiency variance: 5.5 yards per carry this season is meaningfully higher than the 4.8 he averaged over a full season last year, and that gap will likely close as the sample grows, which means some of his current per-game output is inflated relative to what the underlying volume actually supports. The honest synthesis is that Williams remains a touchdown-driven producer operating in an offense that funnels its passing volume elsewhere, which caps his ceiling as a pass-catcher but keeps his touchdown equity real as long as the carries near the goal line keep coming. His ninth-place finish in PPR scoring last season was earned largely on volume and touchdown rate rather than big plays, and that model can hold up again if the red zone work stays at this level. The risk is not that his role disappears, it is that a shrinking snap share nibbles at the margins of his workload just enough to turn a low-teens weekly floor into something closer to committee-back production. Watching how the snap and carry shares move over the next several weeks, rather than reacting to any single game, is the right way to judge whether the early efficiency is sustainable or simply a hot start built on a small sample.
Start Kyren Williams as a lineup regular in the flex or as one of your running back slots in most formats. The volume that mattered last season, meaningful carry totals and consistent red zone work, is present again this year, and 15.6 points per game through two contests confirms the role has not been diminished in any way that shows up in the box score yet. He does not need to see a heavy target share to be useful, because his receiving efficiency, five catches on five targets so far, means the work he does get tends to convert. The one thing that should change your approach is the snap share trend. A move from 68.4% down to 59.3% is worth tracking over the next month; if it keeps sliding while Blake Corum's role grows, that is the signal to treat Williams as a touchdown-dependent piece rather than a set-it-and-forget-it start, and to have a contingency plan ready. Until that shows up consistently across more games, though, the sensible approach is to play him with confidence in any week where the matchup does not scream game script trouble, and to resist bailing on him after a quiet week given how tightly his 2025 output and his early 2026 pace still line up.
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