Jarquez Hunter Led the Rams in Preseason Rushing and Is Still RB4

Jarquez Hunter led the Rams in preseason rushing, and Sean McVay named Ronnie Rivers the team's third running back anyway. Hunter, a fourth-round pick in 2025, paced Los Angeles with 21 carries for 103 yards this August, including 68 yards on 5.7 per carry against New Orleans. He kept getting extra work in games despite sitting outside the top three on the depth chart. None of it moved him up.

That is a useful piece of information for anyone drafting this weekend, and it points in the opposite direction from the one most preseason box-score readers will take. The Rams' backfield hierarchy did not change in August. Kyren Williams is the starter, Blake Corum is the No. 2, and the fight Hunter has been winning is for the third spot, which is a role that touches the ball on offense almost never.

What preseason carries are and are not

The reason Hunter racked up volume is the reason every fourth back racks up volume: he played in the fourth quarter of games where the starters were on the sideline in sweatpants. Twenty-one carries against defensive backups is a real sample of something, but it is not a sample of NFL production, and coaching staffs discount it almost entirely.

McVay's public position is the tell. Coaches do not usually go out of their way to name a third running back in late August unless they are answering a question they consider settled. He named one. That is a staff telling the outside world that the film and the practice reps, not the preseason box score, are running the evaluation.

The secondary detail worth noting is roster math. The Rams have carried three running backs on the active roster in each of the past two seasons. If that holds, one of Hunter and Rivers is on the practice squad or on another team by Monday afternoon, and the loser of a fourth-back competition is not a fantasy asset in any format.

The fantasy fallout

The practical instruction is simple: Blake Corum is the Kyren Williams handcuff, and he is the only Rams back worth a bench spot in a redraft league. Managers who watched three preseason games and concluded Hunter had taken the job would be spending a pick on the wrong player entirely.

That matters more than usual this year because of who Kyren Williams is. Williams has been one of the highest-volume backs in football when healthy, and the Rams signed him to an extension rather than drafting a replacement, which is about as clear a statement of intent as a team can make. A workhorse back on a Super Bowl favorite is exactly the situation where the handcuff carries genuine standalone value, because the offense will not change shape if the starter goes down. It will just hand the ball to whoever is next.

The fantasy market prices handcuffs poorly in general, and it prices them worst when a backfield has an ambiguous third name generating preseason noise. That ambiguity depresses Corum's cost. It should not.

Hunter is a dynasty hold and nothing more. He has genuine athletic traits, he is on a rookie contract, and he is on a team whose starter has an extensive injury history. Those are real reasons to keep him on a taxi squad. They are not reasons to draft him in a twelve-team redraft league where a bench spot is worth more as a Week 1 flex option.

The Melbourne wrinkle

There is one thing that could scramble this in the short term. The Rams open the season against San Francisco at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on September 10 in the United States, and Los Angeles has said it plans to fly in the day before the game and fly home immediately after. A roster playing a football game roughly 8,000 miles from home on a compressed travel schedule is a roster more likely than usual to rotate its backfield in the second half.

That raises the floor of the Rams' No. 2 back specifically for Week 1, which is another small point in Corum's favor for anyone who needs a Thursday flex play. It does not raise the fourth back's floor at all, because a fourth back who is inactive gets no snaps regardless of how tired the starters are.

The Verdexed model take

Verdexed's model projects Kyren Williams to remain one of the highest-usage backs in the league and treats his backup as one of the five most valuable handcuffs on the board, driven by two inputs: the starter's projected touch share and the offense's projected efficiency. The Rams grade near the top of the league in the second, which is what separates a valuable handcuff from a merely rosterable one.

On Hunter specifically, the model applies a heavy discount to preseason production against reserve competition, and his projected 2026 touches sit near zero absent multiple injuries. The model is more favorable on his multi-year outlook, where the combination of draft capital, age, and the Rams' history of developing backs produces a wide range of outcomes.

What to do in your league

Draft Corum as a handcuff with standalone value and let somebody else chase Hunter's preseason line. In dynasty, hold Hunter on the taxi squad and be patient. And keep the roster mechanics in mind through Monday: if Los Angeles keeps four backs, the situation stays murky, and if it keeps three, the question answers itself.

The broader point applies to every backfield this weekend. Preseason carries measure opportunity in games that do not count, and coaching staffs tell the truth about depth charts more often than fantasy managers give them credit for. When a head coach names a third running back unprompted in late August, believe him.