Rams running back Kyren Williams finished last season No. 3 in the league with 1,144 yards rushing.
That came after the 2022 fifth-round pick recorded just 215 yards from scrimmage on 44 touches as a rookie.
During an interview on the Riche Eisen Show this week, Williams said the game “1,000 percent” slowed down for him during his second season. He pointed to the Week 6 victory over Arizona — in which he rushed for 158 yards with a TD — as a specific game when things clicked. But he had been working toward that moment for months.
“Just coming off my rookie year, I knew what to expect, you know? There weren’t any more surprises for me going forward,” Williams said. “I knew that I just had to work. There wasn’t really anything else for me to do. I had a point to prove and that was only going to get proven by the work I put in. And so coming into that second year, I was confident more than ever because I had put in the work. I went home, I went to St. Louis, I came down to Florida — I did the things I had to do to get ready for camp. And then so I just knew that whenever my time was called, I was going to do the things that I’ve done my whole life.
“So, this was not a surprise for me. It took a while — everything does. Now this year, I’m just going to keep grinding like I’m still trying to get to that point where I want to be.”
Williams, 23, wants to make sure he continues that upward trajectory in 2024.
“Honestly, it’s just growing off of what I did last year and being a leader on the field — being somebody people can come to or people can just watch and observe, see what they need to do to be successful,” Williams said. “It really doesn’t take much. You’ve got to be dedicated and you’ve got to work every single day to get to where you want to be — knowing that the end goal is not going to happen tomorrow, or it might not happen the next day.
“But eventually, if you continue to keep working every single day, [you’re] going to get to where you need to be. So for me, it’s just living by that.”