Cam
Akers.
Cam
Akers.
Florida State· 5'10"· 217 lb· 4.47s 40
"A 1,144-yard junior season behind one of the worst offensive lines in the Power Five, which is why the evaluation came down to how much credit a room was willing to give a back for yards nobody blocked for him."Pre-draft read
Compact, thickly built runner who works between the tackles as a one-cut back and has the contact balance to bounce off the first defender in a crowded hole. Runs with a low pad level and finishes forward, and the feet are quick enough to make a defender miss in a phone booth without losing momentum.
The second trait is the burst once he clears the line: he hits the second level at full speed and has the long speed to finish runs. He catches the ball naturally out of the backfield, with 69 college receptions, and is a willing if inconsistent pass protector. The signature is the run where the play is dead at the handoff and he creates something anyway, which was most of his junior season.
Outside-zone running game that gives a one-cut back a defined read
Year 1 as the early-down lead back splitting third downs while the protection catches up; ceiling is a 1,200-yard three-down starter in a zone scheme.
A gap-heavy power scheme that asks him to wait for pullers and read second-level color, where his impatience shows up as negative runs.
Ball security has to be coached before he can be trusted with a 250-carry workload, and the pass-protection reps need real developmental time.
Florida State RB Cam Akers 2019 Highlights
The 1,144-yard junior season, the tape that shows how much of it came after contact.
Cam Akers (Florida State RB) vs Miami (2019)
Full-game cut against a rival, useful for judging the vision and the pass-protection reps.
Cam Akers Ultimate Career Highlights
Career compilation covering all three Florida State seasons.
A Clinton, Mississippi native and five-star recruit who started from his first game at Florida State and carried the offense through three years of program turmoil, playing for two head coaches behind a line that ranked among the worst in the country. He is a dense, balanced runner with real burst, good hands and the toughness to absorb 231 carries in 11 games.
The production tells two stories. The raw numbers are strong: 1,024 yards as a true freshman, a dip to 706 in a chaotic sophomore year, then 1,144 yards and 14 rushing touchdowns as a junior, finishing with 2,874 rushing yards and 34 total touchdowns across 36 games. The context is better than the numbers, because a large share of those yards came after contact behind blocking that regularly failed at the point of attack. The flags are the fumbles — 10 in three seasons — and the vision, which can be impatient when a clean read is available.
The board saw a top-three back in a deep class with tools that would look better in a functional offense. The Rams took him at 52 to be the lead runner in a zone scheme, betting the burst and balance would translate once the blocking stopped being a variable.
- 01
Contact balance
Bounces off the first defender in the hole and finishes forward, which is how he produced yards behind blocking that regularly broke down.
- 02
Burst to the second level
Hits the crease at full speed and has the long speed to turn a clean run into a chunk play rather than a gain of eight.
- 03
Receiving ability
Sixty-nine career catches for 486 yards and seven scores, so he does not have to leave the field on passing downs.
- 04
Workload durability
Carried 231 times in 11 games as a junior and never missed significant time, evidence the compact frame holds up to volume.
- 05
Production in bad context
Ran for 1,144 yards behind one of the country's worst offensive lines, the single most persuasive item on the resume.
- 01
Ball security
Ten fumbles across three seasons, seven of them lost, a rate that will cost him snaps in an NFL backfield rotation.
- 02
Impatient vision
Presses the hole before the blocks develop, a habit built from three years of blocking that never developed at all.
- 03
Pass-protection inconsistency
Willing but late to identify the free rusher, which is the main thing standing between him and third-down work.
- 04
Middling efficiency baseline
A 4.9 career yards-per-carry figure is good rather than elite for a top-50 back, and the sophomore dip is on the record.
Relative Athletic Score (Kent Lee Platte) benchmarks combine/pro-day numbers against every measured prospect at the position since 1987. 10.00 is elite; 5.00 is average.
— — — positional median (p50)
- 40 yd
- 4.47sp50
- Vertical
- 35.5inp50
- Broad jump
- 122inp50
- Three-cone
- —s
- Shuttle
- 4.42sp50
- Bench
- 20repp50
| Yr | Team | G | Att | Yds | TD | Rec | RecYds |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | Florida State | 13 | 194 | 1024 | 7 | 16 | 116 |
| 2018 | Florida State | 12 | 161 | 706 | 6 | 23 | 145 |
| 2019 | Florida State | 11 | 231 | 1144 | 14 | 30 | 225 |
| Career | — | 36 | 586 | 2874 | 27 | 69 | 486 |
Sports-Reference totals include bowl games; season sums match the career line exactly (586 carries, 2,874 yards, 27 rushing touchdowns; 69 receptions, 486 yards, 7 receiving touchdowns in 36 games). StatMuse lists 2,879 rushing yards from a slightly different 2017 game split; the Sports-Reference ledger is used here.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
A productive early-down back who wins a ring and posts good seasons without becoming the offense.
The outcome where the balance and receiving skill make him a true three-down workhorse for a decade.
A talented runner whose ball security and pass-protection gaps cap him as a committee piece who changes teams.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
The rookie year was promising: 625 rushing yards in 13 games and a strong postseason, including 131 yards in a playoff win at Seattle. Then the Achilles tendon he tore before the 2021 training camp rewrote everything. He returned in under six months, started three playoff games and helped the Rams win Super Bowl LVI, which remains the most remarkable thing on his record. He posted a career-best 786 yards in 2022 after a midseason falling-out with the coaching staff nearly ended his Rams tenure, was traded to Minnesota in 2023, and tore the other Achilles that November. He came back to play all 17 games in 2024 across Houston and Minnesota with 444 rushing yards and three receiving touchdowns, signed a one-year deal with New Orleans in June 2025, and finished the year back in Minnesota with a handful of carries. His career line reads 507 rushing attempts for 2,044 yards and 13 touchdowns.
The honest verdict is that the injuries, not the evaluation, decided this one. The traits showed up whenever he was healthy — the contact balance and burst were exactly as advertised in the 2020 postseason and in 2022 — but two torn Achilles tendons in three years took the burst that made him a second-round pick, and the fumbling and pass-protection flags meant there was no floor to fall back on once the explosiveness went. Pick 52 bought a Super Bowl contributor and very little after that.
Data note: Imported from Wikipedia 2020 NFL draft player selections table.