There are plenty of reps in the backfield to go around for the Baltimore Ravens right now with starting RB J.K. Dobbins on the Active/Physically Unable to Perform List. Nobody on the team will speak about it except in the vaguest terms beyond expressing their eventual happiness whenever he does take the field with the rest of his teammates.
One of the players looking to take advantage of the opportunity, though, is a very been-there, done-that guy. It’s Melvin Gordon III, a former first-round draft pick who now at age 30 out to prove, as he told reporters recently, “that I still got it”.
Though he’s had success as recently as 2021—in the two seasons prior to last year, he combined for 1,904 yards on 418 attempts with 17 rushing touchdowns in 31 games with the Denver Broncos—he is coming off a rough season. And he piggybacked off the blame game to help make his case, portraying the Broncos last year under Nathaniel Hackett as a disaster.
“I just was in a bad situation”, he told the team’s website. “I’m sure there’s a lot of guys over there right now thinking the same thing. People do a lot of dirt-kicking when they’re down and disrespecting their name. There’s just a lot to prove”.
He said that even though he is on a different team now, he is in the same boat as his former Broncos teammates who remain with the team, now under the watch of Sean Payton as head coach, who recently drew ire for publicly criticizing the coaching of the team he just took over.
“I’m just in a different color now. Some of those guys get to do it in those jerseys over there in Denver”, Gordon explained. “I’m happy that most of the guys that didn’t have the years that we wanted due to a bad situation got another opportunity to show the world. That’s all you can ask for”.
Though he had already been on the team for two seasons, Gordon found himself released midseason last year. In 10 games up to that point, he had only rushed for 318 yards on 90 rushing attempts with two touchdowns, so he was struggling. He also fumbled five times; four of them occurred in his first four games of the season.
With the fifth came just before he was released, one that was particularly costly on 3rd-and-1 from the three-yard line in an eventual six-point loss. They were actually winning at the time, just before the end of the first half, and eventually lost in overtime.
In his eight-year career, he does have 6,462 career rushing yards with 55 touchdowns. He was twice named a Pro Bowler while a member of the Los Angeles Chargers over the course of his first five years before spending the last three in Denver.
Now in Baltimore, he knows task one is making the 53-man roster behind Dobbins and at least Gus Edwards, who has been a very successful complementary back for the past five years. Justice Hill has been the Ravens’ number three in recent years and remains the favorite for that role.
It’s possible that they carry four running backs, though they will also have a fullback in Patrick Ricard and are likely to have a full complement at tight end as well with Mark Andrews, Isaiah Likely, and Charlie Kolar.
