The Los Angeles Rams have a busy offseason ahead of them, with one of their goals being to sign running back Kyren Williams to a contract extension.
The 24-year-old is entering the final year of his rookie deal that he signed after the team selected him in the fifth round of the 2022 NFL Draft.
The Rams are making it a priority to lock up Williams for the long term as general manager Les Snead and head coach Sean McVay have both said so publicly in recent weeks.
Williams is grateful that the organization wants to keep him around and said he doesn’t want to play for any other team, via Gary Klein of the L.A. Times:
“Heck yeah,” Williams said Thursday at the Super Bowl’s media center. “I don’t want to go play for anybody else besides the Los Angeles Rams, coach McVay, under Les Snead and just around all my teammates I’ve been with the last three or four years.
“I hope that we can get that done, and I hope it doesn’t take away from all the other stuff that’s going on with the Rams, and we can get that over with and get back to focusing on ball.”
Williams is coming off a career year that saw him rush for 1,299 yards and score a total of 16 touchdowns in 16 games.
He is already looking forward to the 2025 season and wants to show everyone that his best years are still ahead of him:
“I’m excited to go back, after three years of a body of work, to really know what I’m good at, where I need to get better and continue to keep working,” he said. “I think this is going to be my best offseason. … I’m going to go back to work and get my body right and come out next season on fire.”
Although the market for running backs can be unpredictable, Williams is in line to receive a lucrative contract from either the Rams or another team if the sides can’t work out a deal.
While the Rams are hoping to extend Williams sooner rather than later, it isn’t necessarily their top priority at the moment.
The team is in the process of finding a trade partner for Cooper Kupp, and they will likely have to rework Matthew Stafford’s contract as well.
Rams hoping to receive 4th-round draft pick for Cooper Kupp
According to a recent report, the Rams are hoping to get back a fourth-round draft pick in a potential trade for Kupp by paying down some of his salary.
Kupp has two years remaining on his contract, with $5 million guaranteed in 2025. If the Rams choose to just cut him this offseason, they will save about $7.52 million against the salary cap.
