1136: Mailbag - Kyren Williams' Targets, X Receivers, and More

JJ Zachariason (0:02)

This is The Late-Round Podcast with your host, JJ Zachariason.

What's up, everyone? It's JJ Zachariason. In this episode 1136 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, thanks for tuning in. Before we get to the mail-back questions this week, I want to send another reminder about The Late-Round Newsletter. That newsletter is absolutely free. Just head to lateround.com and sign up. You get the data dump in your inbox every Monday morning. You get the 15 transactions list on Tuesday morning. You get an awesome match-ups column from Brandon Gidula on Wednesday. And then David Kitchen wraps it all up at the end of the week with one more newsletter. Again, it's totally free. Just head to lateround.com and sign up.

The first question this week says, Hi JJ, I'm a long-time listener and a big fan from Brazil. Thanks for everything you do. I'll tell you what man, every interaction that I've had with a listener from Brazil has been awesome. So, shout out Brazil. But anyway, the question says, The Rams have historically had a very low running back target share under Sean McFay, and Kyren Williams has never really stood out as a receiving back, especially while sharing the backfield with Blake Quorum. But this year, the running back target shares increased every week, and Kyren had seven targets in week three with a very high yards per target for a running back. Do you think this is a real change in the Rams offense, or mostly a temporary result of the injuries to Puka Nakua and Terrence Ferguson? So one of the things that people might not remember about Kyren Williams when he came out of school, was that pass catching was what he was really good at. Like as a prospect, I thought Kyren profiled more as a part-time early down runner, who could do a lot on third downs and be good as a pass catcher. It's honestly kind of bizarre what he's turned into, at least from a usage standpoint. The ability for Williams as a pass catcher has always been there. This system, as you noted, just hasn't exactly allowed for it. Todd Gurley was done in LA after the 2019 season. Since 2020, so 6 seasons worth of data, Rams running backs have an 11.6% target share. It's the lowest in football, and it's the lowest by 3.5 percentage points. Like it's the lowest by an insane margin.

Every year, the Rams have been a bottom three team and running back target share since that point in time. And get this, from 2020 to 2025, we've had 192 completed team seasons. 32 teams, 6 seasons. That equals 192

LA's best season in running back target share over that time frame, ranks 182nd out of 192

They own 6 of the bottom 11 running back target share seasons. Now this year, they're still in the lower side, but they're barely below average at a near 16% running back target share. Now, my initial thought with this was that the Rams were just running more 13-personnel, and that was helping things. They've run 84 plays out of 13-personnel this year. That's like 30 more than any other team. Basically, half the league hasn't even run 10 plays out of 13-personnel. When you have 3 tight ends on the field, there's easier competition for a running back to see a target. And out of 13-personnel, the Rams running back target share is 17%.

So, I thought to myself, Oh, that must be the answer then. Pukunakua's hurt, they're turning to more 13, and that's helping boost the target share for Kyren Williams. The thing is though, over a larger sample, when you include last year, the Rams had a running back target share last season under 12% when running out of 13-personnel, which is still really low. So I don't think it's just simply that. So I dug in a little bit further. When Pukunakua has been on the field with Kyren Williams the start of the 2025 season, Williams has seen a targets per route run rate of 14.6%.

When he's been off the field, that number does jump to 18.8%.

So I do think it's natural to believe that Nakua being off the field would be helpful for all the pass catchers in the Rams offense, just from a volume perspective, and that includes Kyren Williams. That includes the running backs. Kyren's usage as a receiver really hasn't changed. In fact, he had a 53% route share last year, but it's 50% this year. He's just seeing a target on 20% of his route's run versus last year was 15%.

Maybe they're making an effort to get their running backs more involved. We have to be open-minded to that kind of change. But an 8.6% target share that he had last year to an 11.3% target share this year, across a three-game sample, that could also just be noisy.