Cam Akers
For the second straight year, things are getting weird between Cam Akers and the Los Angeles Rams. If the whole show about making him a healthy scratch while pondering his future with the team sounds familiar it's because the Rams did it last season too.
It's Hollywood, who is surprised a sequel was produced.
This time around the trade chatter is happening early enough in the season to actually matter, though. Akers has shown a ton of flash throughout his career and contributed to the Rams run to the Super Bowl back in 2021. In fact, he bounced back from an Achilles injury that year in roughly five months to make an impact during the playoffs and turn in career-high numbers a year later.
Despite this, Sean McVay has continued to use a variety of running backs rather than stick to Akers as his lead back which is seemingly driving the relationship toward its conclusion. That's good news for the Bucs, who have shown an interest in Akers dating back to pre-draft work they did on him when he was coming out of Florida State in 2020.
Akers is in the final year of his rookie deal set to pay him $1.9 million, and it's likely that he ends up getting released rather than traded. That's the most ideal situation for the Bucs since it wouldn't require them to give up a pick, but the price on Akers in a trade isn't very high and might be worth a late Day 3 pick.