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Lindsey Thiry, ESPNSep 24, 2024, 06:00 AM ET
- Lindsey Thiry is a national NFL reporter for ESPN. She joined ESPN in 2018 to cover the Los Angeles Rams after two years of covering them for the Los Angeles Times, and has also covered the Chargers for ESPN. She previously covered the Atlanta Falcons. You can follow her on Twitter/X @LindseyThiry.
LOS ANGELES — Taryn Williams, the mother of Los Angeles Rams running back Kyren Williams, yelled as she watched her son dodge several tackles to run 10 yards for a touchdown against the New Orleans Saints.
“Get in there, get in there, get in there!”
After he scored, Kyren jumped to his feet, sprinted towards Taryn’s seat in the front row at SoFi Stadium, tossed her the ball, then created a heart with his hands. “It just meant so much to me,” Taryn said. “[The ball] is kind of like my own personal trophy.”
A trophy well earned.
“When you say ‘Mama Bear,’ that’s her. She don’t play about her kids. She was all in for me,” Kyren said. “Seeing her face after I threw her the ball, it was everything. It made me feel as if I was — you know, a great son.”
Kyren Williams tossed the ball to his mom, in the No. 23 Rams jersey, after he scored. AP Photo/Ashley Landis
Now a third-year pro, Kyren is continuing to build on his breakout 2023 season. Despite missing five games (four to an ankle injury and regular season finale for rest), he earned a Pro Bowl selection and rushed for 1,144 yards and 12 touchdowns on 228 carries and caught 32 passes for 206 yards and three scores.
On Sunday against the division rival San Francisco 49ers, Kyren scored on 4-yard run, his third touchdown of the day, to tie the game with 1:51 remaining at SoFi Stadium.
“It was cool,” Kyren said of his game-tying score. “For me, I don’t really try to get too excited. I try to stay even-keeled.”
The Rams — without star receivers Cooper Kupp and Puka Nacua — outscored the 49ers 20-3 in the final 19 minutes, to rally to a 27-24 victory. Kyren finished with 89 rushing and 27 receiving yards.
“Kyren was big,” Rams coach Sean McVay said after the game, awarding Kyren a game ball. “He’s always just got such a great game day demeanor and it showed up.”
Introduced to football at a young age by his father, Larry Williams, Kyren knew it was a path he wanted to pursue. Taryn says her son told her when he was 5 years old that he was going to be an NFL player.
It didn’t seem wild to her, given he began riding a bicycle without training wheels at 2 1/2.
“I knew, athletically he was going to be special,” she said. “There’s not many kids that can do that.”
What she couldn’t predict was that her son would often feel overlooked — from little league to high school to college and the NFL — believing his work ethic and skill set might not be enough to take him where he wanted to go.
“There was always somebody else that was over me, getting all the offers, that was getting the ball, that was getting all this attention,” Kyren said.
That’s where Taryn stepped in with a 30-second elevator pitch for college recruiting.
“Hi, my son is Kyren Williams, he’s a junior right now at St. John Vianney High School in St. Louis, Missouri,” Taryn would say. “He’s a running back. He has X amount of touchdowns and X amount of rushing yards. He’s leading the St. Louis area. He’s also on the honor roll and has straight A’s. He is a player that will come to you for passion. He is a player that will be able to help lead your team and he wants to win.”
“At the time it was embarrassing,” Kyren said. “I’m this young kid like, ‘Mom, chill, like no ma, let me handle it, OK? Let me do it.’ But she wasn’t going for that. She said, ‘No I’m going to do it.'”
Taryn also once wrote a letter to a little league coach on behalf of a grade-school Kyren. She wanted to spell out why her son needed to move positions to better suit his physical attributes and have a shot at a scholarship. After thinking it through, she never actually sent the letter, but that doesn’t mean she didn’t believe it was her job as a mom.
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Listed as a three-star prospect in high school by some recruiting services and four-star by others, including ESPN, questions about Kyren’s ability ranged from his size — at 5-foot-9 and 170 pounds — to his build, from his speed, to his position. He played both offense and defense, but was being recruited mostly as a running back and slot receiver.
“Some of it was kind of around, ‘Oh, well, he’s not big enough’ or ‘He’s not fast enough,” said Jerry Stanfield, the former running backs coach at St. John Vianney who became Kyren’s personal coach. Or it was almost like people would find reasons to not want to make this kid be an elite guy.”
Former Notre Dame offensive coordinator Tommy Rees recalled his first encounter with Kyren, who had come for a recruiting visit. He spotted him in the high school basement weight room around 5:30 a.m.
“I remember just being completely impressed with his work ethic, how he was working that morning, the way he was pushing himself,” Rees said. “All of those things you see in a 16-year-old that aren’t real common, and I felt pretty convicted about his ability to play because of the way I saw him work.”
However Rees, now an assistant with the Cleveland Browns, also understood some of the challenges facing Kyren.
“Back then… he was kind of this shorter chubbier guy,” Rees said. “Was he a slot receiver? Was he a running back? Was he a safety? Nobody really knew what position he was going to be because he played so many, and I think for a while he viewed himself as a wideout, but his body type didn’t say wideout.”
Kyren’s senior season at St. John Vianney may have answered some questions. He had 2,035 rushing yards, 725 receiving yards and scored 40 total touchdowns.
Kyren committed to play running back for Rees on coach Brian Kelly’s staff at Notre Dame. In South Bend, he became the first running back in 15 years to eclipse the 1,000-yard rushing mark in back-to-back seasons and scored 31 touchdowns (four receiving) in that span.
“In a meeting one time at Notre Dame our OC said, ‘Kyren, we thought of you as [an] overhought’,” Kyren said. “‘But look at you now in this position.'”
Rees said of Kyren: “Any job you needed him to do, he would do.”
Kyren Williams played his college football at Notre Dame before being selected in the fifth round of the 2022 NFL draft. Michael Hickey/Getty Images
Rams general manager Les Snead called Kyren to inform him he’d be pick No. 164, selected in the fifth round of the 2022 NFL draft.
“I don’t remember much of the call because I was so emotional,” Kyren said. “I was just so lost in the moment that my dream was finally coming true.”
“My biggest memory is when he got drafted,” Taryn said. “The hard work that we put in, his sacrifices, his commitment. He grew up wanting his dream.”
Despite realizing his dream of becoming a pro, outside doubt still crept in by way of draft evaluations and projections.
Kyren’s size again became a focal point, with some scouting reports concerned about his ability to carry the load expected of a starting NFL running back, and predicting he would be best utilized in a rotation.
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Upon revisiting the scouting reports and projections, Taryn chuckled.
“He’s showing he can be an every down back right now,” she said. “This goes back to kind of how people doubted him growing up… he’s proved everybody wrong that has doubted him.”
Now, Kyren is on course to provide backfield stability that they haven’t experienced since Todd Gurley (2015-19).
As a rookie in 2022, Kyren broke his foot during an offseason practice, then returned in time for the season — only to suffer a high-ankle sprain that landed him on injured reserve in Week 2 for seven games. Upon his return, Kyren backed up second-round pick Cam Akers, and finished the season with 139 rushing yards on 35 carries.
Last season, after coming off the bench in an opener to rush for 52 yards and two scores, Kyren supplanted Akers as the starter. By Week 3, Akers — whose relationship with the team had soured — was traded to the Minnesota Vikings.
“[Kyren] brings such a great energy and vibe to our offense,” Rams offensive coordinator Mike LaFleur. “Not just from that running back room. His vibe and energy spreads to all of us as coaches, as teammates.”
Kyren Williams scored three touchdowns in the Rams comeback victory over the 49ers Sunday. Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images
When Kyren scored to help the Rams clinch a 2023 playoff bid with a victory over the New York Giants, he spotted his mom in the stands, sprinted to her and, again, tossed her the football.
However, this time when Kyren flipped his mom the ball, a Giants fan intercepted it. Taryn wrestled the ball away.
No one messes with Mama Bear.
“She means everything,” Kyren said. “I just remember ever since I started playing football, I always knew my mom would be there. I can hear her in the stands. She’s screaming, she’s doing what she has to do for her son to knows that she’s supporting.”
