St. Louis Rams: Will Tre Mason Still Have a Role in the Offense This Season?
As the St. Louis Rams opened up training camp this past weekend, one of the oddest sights was second-year running back Tre Mason participating as the team went through kickoff and punt coverage drills. That’s not to say it’s ever a negative to have a player working for the best of the team and trying to earn a spot on special teams, but it’s not often that you see a player who led his team in rushing yards as a rookie and quickly seized the starting running back job cast into duty on the kickoff or punt team as a second-year pro.
That may be the case for Mason, however, who had his future muddied when the Rams selected Georgia running back Todd Gurley with the 10th overall pick in this year’s draft, making him the first back taken in the first round since 2012 and the highest-selected running back since Trent Richardson went third overall that year.
Though Mason may very well be a special teams contributor, the question remains of whether he’ll have a role in the offense with Gurley in the fold. He should be able to retain the lion’s share of the carries during the first few games of 2015, as Gurley is coming off a torn ACL and may sit out the preseason. Head coach Jeff Fisher has historically eased his rookies into action, and Gurley in particular should fit that bill coming off the injury. When Gurley gets going, however, he’s expected to be the bell cow. And with Gurley getting the load of the carries, the trends indicate that Mason will have trouble retaining a role in the offense.
So for those expecting Mason to still see carries as Gurley’s backup, they may be in for a surprise, especially after the 21-year-old rookie is fully up to speed.
It’s highly possible that the Rams’ attempt to make Mason a useful special teams player is an attempt avoid the pattern among the Rams’ running backs that has developed since 2013. Daryl Richardson, who was the team’s opening day starter in 2013, was replaced by Zac Stacy early in the season, and since he wasn’t a contributor to the Rams’ special teams efforts, he ended up being a healthy scratch for much of the latter part of the season.
In an eerily similar development, Stacy lost his job to Mason in the Rams’ sixth game of 2014, and because of Stacy’s inability to contribute on special teams, he was a useless member of the Rams’ 46-man gameday active roster from there on out.
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One of the reasons that Mason was a healthy scratch for the Rams’ first four games last season was because he wasn’t a strong enough special-teamer to earn a spot on any of the Rams’ special teams units. With the Rams’ tendency to use just two backs from scrimmage and backups Chase Reynolds and Trey Watts establishing themselves as impact special-teamers, there was no need to dress Mason as an emergency running back only to have him go unused. Thus, he’ll need to improve in the kicking game this year if he wants to make himself really useful.
Benny Cunningham has seen the majority of the work as the Rams’ second running back since bursting onto the scene during the early part of 2013. In particular, he broke out last season, finishing 12th in the NFL in all-purpose yards (1,561), including 246 on the ground, 352 as a receiver, and 963 as a kick returner. Strangely, he’s kind of turned out to be the “jack of all trades” that the Rams were hoping to get in Tavon Austin; though he’s not exactly spectacular in one particular area, he makes an impact in three different phases of the game.
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So for those expecting Mason to still see carries as Gurley’s backup, they may be in for a surprise, especially after the 21-year-old rookie is fully up to speed. The Rams have almost exclusively stuck to using two backs per game since Fisher took over as head coach in 2012, and Cunningham has nearly always been the number two back when healthy since his emergence. The most carries that the Rams’ third backfield option has received in a given game since Fisher took over is five, which occurred on two occasions early in the 2014 season.
The Rams’ greatest use of more than two running backs has come during periods of transition. Benny Cunningham received four rush attempts against the Jacksonville Jaguars in Week 5 of the 2013 season, as the Rams were transitioning from Daryl Richardson to Zac Stacy as their bell cow starter. Besides the two-week period in which Cunningham was injured, Richardson was then largely phased out of the Rams’ offense for the remainder of the season.
As Stacy struggled at the beginning of his sophomore campaign, the Rams again went through a short phase where they gave respectable carries to three different backs. Before turning to Mason, the Rams aimed to shake things up by rewarding undrafted rookie Trey Watts with five carries in Week 3 against Dallas. As Mason began his rapid ascent into the starting position, he received five carries in his debut against San Francisco in Week 6, then as Stacy switched roles with him, the second-year back got one last chance to redeem himself at Kansas City in Week 8, getting five carries in a 34-7 blowout loss. Slot receiver Tavon Austin was also mixed into the rotation relatively significantly during the early part of the season, collecting 13 carries through the season’s first five games.
Though Austin continued to get occasional carries throughout the duration of the season, there wasn’t another instance after the Kansas City game where three Rams lasted as running backs got more than two carries in a given game. Aside from six carries that he received in a Week 13 52-0 blowout of the Oakland Raiders, Stacy largely became an afterthought in the Rams’ offense, just like Richardson before him.
Of course, it’s always possible that Mason could supplant Cunningham, a former undrafted free agent who has already exceeded his projected potential, as the third-down receiving back. Mason’s shown that he has solid receiving ability, as he caught 16 passes for 148 yards and a touchdown during his rookie season, and caught 12 passes for 163 yards and a touchdown during his junior season at Auburn. However, with as impressive as Cunningham was last season, it’s difficult to see him being phased out of the Rams’ offense.
With the change in leadership from departed offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer to his replacement, Frank Cignetti (and newly-appointed run game coordinator Rob Boras), it’s also possible that the Rams could become more open-minded about using more backs in a given game. With Fisher taking such an active role in the offensive philosophy and Cignetti being an assistant that was promoted in-house, rather than a new hire from the outside, it’s more likely than not that things will largely stay the same.
Mason, who just turned 22 years old, will have all the motivation in the world to earn a prominent role, with both Gurley and Cunningham threatening his playing time despite his impressive 765 rushing yards and four touchdowns during his 12-game rookie season. However, with Gurley being such a high pick and Cunningham emerging as one of the league’s best receiving backs, Mason may struggle to get on the field beyond special teams work, no matter what he does to impress in the backfield.