Blake Corum Camp Update — August 23: The Backfield Script Skipped Him Again

The Rams won Saturday's exhibition 34 to nothing over New Orleans, and the ground game's headline belonged to Jarquez Hunter — 12 carries for 68 yards and a touchdown, per the Saints' own game book — with the other two rushing scores coming from quarterback Stetson Bennett's legs, per Nathan Lee's wire recap for Gray Television. Blake Corum's name does not appear in either of those accounts, and no attributable charting of the game or of Thursday's joint practice with the Saints gave a backfield read on him this week.

That makes two straight preseason games without the one signal we have been waiting on. The first-team offense did not play Saturday — Bennett took every first-half snap and rookie Ty Simpson the rest, per Blaine Grisak at Sports Illustrated — so the question of who opens drives with the starters could not be asked. The starters' real work came Thursday, 45 competitive snaps against the Saints' defense in the joint practice, per Mykell Mathieu at The Sporting Tribune, but the practice reporting centered Matthew Stafford and the receivers, not the running back rotation.

Back in June we said Corum's 5.1 yards a carry was real but that his value depended entirely on the split with Kyren Williams, and we refused to underwrite carries the staff had never assigned. Three weeks of leaner-and-faster buzz later, the assigned-carry count is still zero.

Thursday's preseason finale against the Chargers is the last game script before the roster cuts to 53 on Sunday, August thirtieth. Watch whether Corum gets first-unit drive-openers if the starters play, and whether his receiving work grows past a courtesy. We'll check after cut day.

_Data via nflverse._