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LMU93
My impression of Gurley as a rookie was he hit the LOS hard and once past it he had great vision and ability to change direction. That was largely lost last year because, well, there were no holes. Then I think he started freelancing out of desperation and made things worse. Probably developed a defeatist attitude.
This year his vision behind the LOS, before he hits the hole, has been impressive. Like on the 36-yard run around the left side Sunday. He's more patient, trusts his OL, the scheme and himself much more.
He's on pace for 2,048 yards from scrimmage. He'd join Dickerson (3 times), Faulk (3) and Jackson (1) as the only Rams RBs to do that. I hope he gets it. He's an excellent receiver.
He also lost weight, lacked the explosion we saw in 2015, and said that he started his off-season work out "1 or maybe 2 months" later after some time off (that's not an exact quote, it's a from memory quote, but the substance is right).
And actually according to F.O. stats, Rams RBs were not stuffed behind the OL at a higher percentage in 2016 than they were in 2015.
On top of it his yards after contact went way down. In 2015 he broke tackles on 47 of 229 attempts, which is 20.5% of the time. In 2016, he broke tackles on 41 of 278 attempts, which is 14.7%. There's also this:
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Gurley was seventh out of 52 running backs in yards after contact per attempt in 2015 at 2.87, but he saw that number drop to 2.18 in 2016, putting him 46th out of 53 qualified backs.
So I think a lot of what happened to TG last year was self-induced. He didn't look like the same back because he wasn't the same back.
Yeah there were line issues too but I think the 2 things compounded one another---Gurley and OL, OL and Gurley.
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