Exactly one player in the NFL has more yards from scrimmage this season than Todd Gurley, and not surprisingly, that man is Le’Veon Bell. He ranks first in the NFL with 1,684 total yards, 47 more than Gurley has in the same number of games.

However, when you look deeper at their stats, you’ll notice one glaring difference: Bell has touched the ball 358 times compared to Gurley’s 287 touches. Translation: Bell averages 4.7 yards per touch, while Gurley averages a full yard more per touch (5.7).

The Steelers and Rams treat their stud running backs differently with Pittsburgh featuring Bell more than L.A. uses Gurley. That’s not to say Gurley is barely getting the ball – he’s second in the NFL in touches – but his utilization in recent weeks is surprisingly low.

He hasn’t carried the ball 20 times in a game since Week 7 after reaching that plateau four times in the first seven games. On Sunday against the Eagles’ No. 1 ranked run defense, he had 96 yards on just 13 attempts, good for 7.4 yards per carry – the third-highest rate of his career.

So what gives? Why, in such a pivotal game, did Gurley touch the ball only 16 times? Sean McVay is to blame for that, as is the fact that the Rams only ran 45 plays.

“I’ve got to do a better job of making sure that he gets enough touches to get into the flow, especially when we were getting some good movement,” McVay said Monday. “But it is a delicate balance and then I think everything is a little bit more magnified. At the end of the day, however you want to cut it, I’ve got to get him going – give him more opportunities with the way he was running it and have a better feel for the flow of the game. That was something that I didn’t think I did very well yesterday.”

Gurley racked up 135 total yards on those 16 touches, and it seemed like every time he had the ball in his hands, good things happened. He accounted for nearly half of the Rams’ yards against the Eagles despite Philly boasting the No. 1 ranked run defense.

McVay preaches having a run-pass balance offensively, which is absolutely right, but there hasn’t been much of one in recent weeks. In the past four games, Jared Goff has attempted 137 passes, or an average of 34 per game. Gurley, on the other hand, has carried it just 64 times in that span, or 16 times per game.

That’s a huge difference, and while a running back’s carries rarely match a quarterbacks’ pass attempts, that split for the Rams is far too wide. Again, McVay knows he’s been too aggressive at times, and has to change that trend.

“I think there’s been some times where you definitely get a little bit too aggressive,” he said. “You’d like to be able to not lose sight of – while you do want to always apply and attack defenses, let’s not lose sight of just the flow and being able to kind of have some run-pass balance. I think, especially, just going back to the New Orleans game and then these last couple weeks, you can definitely look at it – and I look at it myself and say, ‘You’ve got to make sure that you’re cognizant of giving the runs a chance and trying to stay balanced.’ And that’s something that I haven’t done.”

It won’t get any easier for Gurley or the Rams on Sunday when they travel to Seattle and take on the Seahawks. They own the eighth-best run defense in the league after going five straight games allowing fewer than 100 yards rushing before Sunday’s loss to the Jaguars.

McVay knows he’ll have to be more balanced offensively against Seattle despite saying the same thing for several weeks now.

“You can’t keep standing up here and saying the same things, you’ve just got to get it fixed,” he said. “That’s something that I’ve got to be mindful of.”