Blake Corum Camp Update — August 31: Survived to a Three-Man Backfield
2026 NFL Season · Monday, Aug 31
Corum made the initial fifty-three, and the backfield around him went from six-plus to three: Jarquez Hunter was traded to Miami and Dean Connors and Jordan Waters were cut. The Corum-Williams split, the question that defines his value, closed the preseason with the assigned-carry count still at zero.
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Blake Corum made the 53, and most of the summer competition behind him is gone. The Rams' cut-day roster carries three running backs — Kyren Williams, Corum and Ronnie Rivers, per Mykell Mathieu at The Sporting Tribune — after a room that ran six-plus deep in August was cut down from both ends: Jarquez Hunter traded to Miami on Thursday in the Tutu Atwell deal, per the Associated Press, Dean Connors waived in the second wave despite a 10-carry, 59-yard finale with his third receiving touchdown of the preseason, per Blaine Grisak at Sports Illustrated, and Jordan Waters cut in the same wave, per Grisak's roster tracker.
Be careful what that subtraction is worth. No reporting connects the Hunter trade to Corum's role, and Hunter never took a regular-season carry as a rookie, per the Associated Press — so his exit removes no incumbent work from anyone. Roster subtraction is not role expansion. What the week established is narrower and still real: Corum is on the team, and the rotation behind the top two is now one man deep.
The question the prior episode was watching went unanswered for the last possible time. The starters were rested in Thursday's finale, per Adam Wells at Bleacher Report, so there were no first-unit drive-openers to observe and no receiving read either — and with the preseason over, the assigned-carry count last week's episode flagged at zero closes the exhibition season at zero, permanently.
Back in June we said Corum's 5.1 yards a carry in 2025, by our numbers, was real, but that his value depended entirely on the split with Williams — and we refused to underwrite carries the staff had never assigned. We still refuse. The preseason ended without assigning any; the only thing that moved is who is left in the room when the question finally gets asked, in a real game. We'll be back when the split gets a live rep.
_Data via nflverse._
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