Todd Gurley’s Rams Career: The Rise, the Knee, and What the Numbers Actually Say
Week 15, 2017. The Rams are hosting Seattle at the Coliseum. Todd Gurley takes a handoff on 3rd and 20 with 30 seconds left in the first half, finds a crease, and runs 57 yards for a touchdown. By the time the final whistle blows, he has four touchdowns and 180 yards from scrimmage in a 42-7 demolition of the Seahawks. Nobody in the NFL that season scored 24 points in a single game. Nobody else came close. That afternoon is the clearest single-game picture of what Gurley was at his absolute peak – a player who could make a mockery of a defense that knew exactly what was coming.
What followed over the next two years is one of the stranger arcs in recent NFL history. Not a slow fade. Not a gradual decline a team could see coming and plan around. Something faster and more confusing than that, involving a knee injury the Rams were never fully straight about, a $57.5 million extension they gave him anyway, and a release that came one day before a $10.5 million bonus was due.
Georgia, the ACL, and Why Teams Drafted Him Anyway
Gurley played three seasons at Georgia and was, without much argument, the best running back in college football during his time there. He finished with 3,285 rushing yards and 42 touchdowns on just over 500 carries – numbers that look even better when you account for the fact that SEC defenses are not the Mid-American Conference. He was a first-team All-SEC selection and had a legitimate Heisman case heading into his junior year.
Then, in November 2014 against Auburn, he tore his ACL. The injury ended his season after six games and knocked him out of the bowl game. He declared for the draft anyway, skipping his senior year, and the injury questions hung over every pre-draft evaluation meeting. The Rams – then still in St. Louis – took him 10th overall in 2015. He was the first running back drafted that year and the highest-drafted Georgia back since Garrison Hearst went third overall in 1993. Teams knew about the knee going in. They drafted him anyway. That decision, in hindsight, is where this whole story begins.
The Rookie Year That Ended Any Doubt (2015)
He sat out the first two preseason games still working back from the ACL. Then, in Week 4 against the Arizona Cardinals, with the Rams trailing at halftime, Gurley rushed for 144 yards in the second half alone. The Rams won 24-22. From that point on, the conversation shifted from “will the knee hold?” to “how many carries can we give this guy?”
He finished 2015 with 1,106 rushing yards and 10 touchdowns on 229 attempts, despite starting only 12 games. Those numbers made him only the third rookie in Rams history to rush for 1,000 yards – the others were Eric Dickerson in 1983 and Jerome Bettis in 1993. He was also the second Rams rookie ever to hit 1,000 yards and 10 touchdowns in the same season, again with Dickerson being the only other one. He won Offensive Rookie of the Year decisively, getting 27 votes to Jameis Winston’s 17, and went to the Pro Bowl. The ACL talk dried up almost entirely.
The Down Year Nobody Talks About (2016)
The Rams moved to Los Angeles before the 2016 season. They finished 4-12. Gurley had 885 rushing yards and six touchdowns – a sharp drop from his rookie numbers – and ran behind an offensive line that gave him almost nothing to work with. Jeff Fisher was fired after Week 14.
Gurley’s 2016 is worth acknowledging plainly because it’s often glossed over in retrospectives that jump straight from his rookie year to the McVay era. He averaged 55.3 rushing yards per game that season, ranked 17th in the NFL. For a player who’d just been the league’s top rookie, it was a jarring step backward. Whether that was scheme, personnel, Gurley’s own development, or some combination isn’t clean to answer – his 2015 season behind a different offensive line looked nothing like his 2016, which at least points toward the line.
What Sean McVay Unlocked in 2017
McVay was 31 years old when the Rams hired him in January 2017, the youngest head coach in NFL history at that point. The effect on Gurley was almost immediate. Through the first eight weeks of the season, Gurley averaged more than 100 yards from scrimmage per game. After the bye, he went on a stretch where he averaged 62 rushing yards and 54 receiving yards per game over five weeks. Then came December.
In Week 14 at Philadelphia, he had 96 rushing yards, two rushing touchdowns, and three catches for 39 yards in a losing effort. The following week was the Seattle game. The week after that – Week 16 against Tennessee – he caught 10 passes for 158 yards and two receiving touchdowns to go along with 118 rushing yards. That’s 276 yards from scrimmage in a single regular-season game. He won NFC Offensive Player of the Week for the second straight week and was named NFC Offensive Player of the Month for the second time that season.
By the end of 2017, Gurley had 1,305 rushing yards, 13 rushing touchdowns, 788 receiving yards, and 6 receiving touchdowns. He led the NFL in rushing touchdowns, total touchdowns (19), yards from scrimmage (2,093), and all-purpose yards. He was the 16th player in NFL history to put up a 750-rushing/750-receiving yard season. He won Offensive Player of the Year and was named first-team All-Pro. He received MVP votes. The Rams went 11-5 and made the playoffs for the first time since 2004.
Back-to-Back First-Team All-Pro and a Super Bowl That Went Wrong (2018)
The 2018 Rams went 13-3. Gurley finished second in the NFL in rushing yards and led the league in rushing touchdowns for the second straight year with 17. He was named first-team All-Pro again – back-to-back, a distinction that put him in rare company for modern running backs. Through eight games, he was on pace for 1,600 rushing yards, 22 rushing touchdowns, and 700 receiving yards. In Week 8 against Denver, he carried 28 times for 208 yards and two touchdowns, added four catches for 36 yards and another score, and was statistically the best player in football.
Then something shifted. His usage in the second half of the season became inconsistent in ways that didn’t match the game situations. In the NFC Championship against New Orleans, he had four carries. Four. In the Super Bowl against New England, the lowest-scoring Super Bowl in league history (13-3 Patriots), Gurley had 10 carries for 35 yards and caught a touchdown, but was largely absent in key situations. The Rams lost. Mixed messages came out of the organization about his knee. The Rams said he was healthy. The usage said something else.
In July 2018, before any of the postseason confusion, the Rams had signed Gurley to a four-year, $57.5 million extension that included $45 million in guarantees. It was the richest contract ever given to a running back at that point. Given what the Rams clearly knew – or suspected – about his knee by the postseason, that contract sits uncomfortably in the timeline of this story.
The Diagnosis, the Decline, and What the Rams Knew
In June 2019, Gurley publicly confirmed what had been rumored for months: he was dealing with arthritis in his left knee – the same knee he’d torn his ACL in back at Georgia in 2014. Knee osteoarthritis following an ACL reconstruction isn’t unusual. It’s a known long-term risk of the surgery. What made Gurley’s situation more complicated was that the Rams’ handling of the information left other teams unable to accurately assess what they were dealing with when trade talks began.
Multiple team officials told reporters that they were deeply skeptical of the knee’s condition and couldn’t get straight answers. The Rams apparently attempted to trade Gurley as the new league year opened in 2020. No deal happened. When teams can evaluate a player in free agency instead of absorbing a massive contract, the calculus changes entirely – and with the medical uncertainty baked in, nobody was willing to take on his deal.
On the field in 2019, Gurley finished with 857 rushing yards, 4 receiving touchdowns, and 12 rushing touchdowns – the rushing yard total his worst since his sophomore slump in 2016. His yards per carry dropped to 3.8 after averaging 4.9 from 2015 through 2018. The offensive line also deteriorated: left guard Rodger Saffold left for Tennessee, center John Sullivan retired, right tackle Rob Havenstein was injured. This isn’t to excuse the numbers, but to note that the Gurley situation in 2019 had multiple causes that the team and media both sometimes collapsed into a single “bad knee” narrative.
The Rams released him on March 19, 2020, one day before a $10.5 million bonus was due. They absorbed a dead-cap hit of roughly $20 million spread over two seasons to make it happen. Gurley said later that he’d been expecting either a cut or a trade for some time. He mentioned hearing his name connected to Buffalo and Pittsburgh in trade discussions and saying no. Whether the team actually offered him a say in that or whether he’s retelling it charitably – he didn’t comment further on the specifics.
Atlanta and the Quiet Exit From the NFL
The Falcons signed Gurley the day after his release. He finished 2020 with 678 rushing yards, nine rushing touchdowns, and 28 receptions for 240 yards. His touchdowns were solid; his yardage was not. He averaged 3.3 yards per carry, the lowest of his career. Matt Ryan did him no favors – the Falcons’ passing game was in decline – but the knee clearly wasn’t what it had been.
He never played another NFL game after 2020. He retired at 26, which is still strange to type. He has said, across several podcasts and interviews since, that he doesn’t regret it. His agent had told him when he signed the Rams extension that if they cut him, he’d be 26 with a lot of money. That’s exactly how it went. He finished his career with 6,082 rushing yards, 67 rushing touchdowns, 243 receptions, 2,254 receiving yards, and 12 receiving touchdowns in 88 games.
Where He Actually Ranks Among Rams Running Backs
The Rams franchise has produced three enshrined Hall of Fame running backs: Eric Dickerson, Jerome Bettis, and Marshall Faulk. Dickerson’s 1984 season – 2,105 rushing yards, a single-season record that still stands – is the measuring stick against which everyone gets compared. Faulk’s peak from 1999 through 2001 with the Greatest Show on Turf offense is probably the greatest three-year stretch any running back has ever had in terms of combined impact. Bettis spent only three seasons with the Rams before going to Pittsburgh, where his real legacy was built.
Then there’s Steven Jackson, who deserves more credit than he typically gets. He rushed for 1,000-plus yards in eight consecutive seasons from 2005 through 2012, doing it behind some of the worst offensive lines in the NFC. Jackson never made a Pro Bowl and never had a 1,300-yard season – but his consistency over a full decade with a mediocre team is a more impressive career than it’s often remembered as.
Gurley’s 5,404 rushing yards with the Rams rank fifth in franchise history. His 70 total touchdowns rank fourth. His 58 rushing touchdowns tied Marshall Faulk’s franchise record during the 2019 season. Those are legitimate numbers. But his peak lasted roughly two seasons at full force, and the injury cut the rest of it short before anyone could find out what the full career looked like.
The honest ranking is probably: Dickerson, Faulk, then a second tier that includes Gurley, Jackson, and Bettis with real disagreement about the order. Gurley’s 2017-2018 stretch, taken alone, compares to anything Dickerson or Faulk did in their best two-year runs. Comparing career arcs is where Gurley loses ground, and it’s not a close argument.
The Hall of Fame Question, Which Is Genuinely Hard
Gurley became eligible for the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2026. He wasn’t included on the initial screening committee’s list of 129 eligible nominees. That absence doesn’t close the door permanently – the HOF has multiple nomination tracks and eligibility doesn’t expire – but it was a signal.
The statistical case isn’t weak. Three Pro Bowls. Two first-team All-Pro selections. Back-to-back rushing touchdown titles. Offensive Rookie of the Year. Offensive Player of the Year. A Super Bowl appearance. Over his six-year career, he averaged 1,013 rushing yards and 11 rushing touchdowns per season across all six, including the two bad years at the end. If you strip those and look only at his four productive seasons, the numbers are elite by any era’s standards.
The problem is career length, and the Hall voters care about it more than the stats sheets suggest they should. Priest Holmes played 10 seasons, rushed for 8,172 yards, and scored 86 touchdowns – he’s not in. Arian Foster played eight seasons, rushed for 6,527 yards, scored 54 touchdowns, and led the league in rushing twice – he’s not in. The threshold the committee applies in practice seems to require something beyond statistical peaks: either longevity, or a championship, or a combination of both. Gurley has neither.
What makes the HOF question genuinely interesting – and unresolved – is whether the criteria make sense for a player whose career was shortened by a documented medical condition rather than a performance decline. He didn’t get worse and keep playing. He got hurt and stopped. That distinction matters morally, even if the Hall voters don’t weight it that way in their ballots. The screening committee’s decision to leave him off the initial list in 2026 suggests they don’t, at least not yet.
What He’s Been Doing Since
Gurley stayed in Los Angeles after retiring. He has remained active in brand partnerships – the Bush’s Beans campaign is one he’s mentioned publicly, noting some irony given that his Georgia career ended with an NCAA suspension tied partly to NIL-era violations before NIL was legal. He founded the MADE Foundation, focused on youth initiatives in his home state of North Carolina. He has traveled extensively: New Zealand, Thailand, South Korea, Egypt, Jordan, Israel, Turkey, Greece, Italy, Bali, and several Caribbean islands, among others.
In 2024 and 2025 podcast appearances, he talked about his Rams years with a detachment that didn’t sound performative. He said Sean McVay reducing his role late in his career made the situation clear to him without anyone having to say it explicitly. He said he lived in LA and was fine. He said he’d done things he never imagined doing. A Super Bowl ring would have been better, clearly – but he didn’t frame retirement as a loss.
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