Column: Rookie Todd Gurley shows St. Louis Rams he was worthy of No. 10 pick

Reporting from St. Louis —  Les Snead naturally felt badly for Todd Gurley after the Georgia running back suffered a season-ending knee injury last fall.

But Snead, general manager of the St. Louis Rams, also was tormented by the thought that Gurley would wind up with an NFC West rival. At the time, it seemed unlikely that the Rams would take him with the No. 10 pick.

When Gurley postponed medical evaluations at the scouting combine in February, Snead thought: He’s going to slide to the bottom of the first round and be drafted 31st by the Seattle Seahawks.

The outlook started looking better for Gurley, prompting Snead to wonder: Will the Arizona Cardinals take him at 24?

Time passed, and Gurley continued to heal. Snead thought: Uh oh, the San Francisco 49ers are going to take him at 17.

The Rams, meanwhile, sat mum. Most experts had them taking an offensive lineman.

“You knew there were a few teams wanting running backs,” said Snead, easing back into his office chair at Rams headquarters this week. “What I didn’t want to occur at all was somebody getting any hint that we were going to take him, with the whole selfish motive of, ‘Hey, the Rams are going to take him at 10. Let’s jump to nine or eight and get him first.’”

Snead’s concern: He didn’t want the Rams trying to tackle Gurley for the next decade.

Gurley chuckled this week when he heard the back story.

“That’s pretty cool, man,” he said, standing in a hallway outside the locker room at team headquarters. “I definitely was excited when they took me at No. 10. I was kind of shocked. They really kept it quiet. I know when they do those visits to do background checks back home, one of my high school coaches was like, ‘Yeah, the Rams came by,’ and I’m like, ‘They’re not going to take me.’ But they did. It was crazy.”

The Rams got their hands on Gurley, and now everyone else in the NFL is trying to do the same. He has been an indisputable phenom so far. After sitting out the exhibition season and the first two regular-season games as he continued to rehabilitate his knee, Gurley knocked off the rust with six carries against the Pittsburgh Steelers and in the last three games ran for 146, 159 and 128 yards.

The soft-spoken kid, who has struck a friendship with Rams Hall of Fame running back Eric Dickerson, is the first NFL rookie since 2005 to rush for at least 125 yards in each of his first three starts, matching the feat of former Tampa Bay Buccaneers back Cadillac Williams.

The St. Louis fans were so loud in chanting Gurley’s name during last Sunday’s game against the Cleveland Browns that Rams Coach Jeff Fisher had to flap his arms to hush them so his offense could hear the quarterback.

“I would’ve liked to have been around to listen to the ‘Eric’ chant as well, the Eric Dickerson chant,” Fisher said afterward.

Matter of fact, the first person Gurley heard from after the game was Dickerson, who called a Rams executive and had him hand the phone to the rookie sensation in the locker room.

“I like his acceleration, I like his first step, and when I saw him in college I said, ‘This kid can play,’” said Dickerson, who as a member of the Los Angeles Rams set still-standing NFL records for rushing yards by a rookie with 1,808 in 1983 and for a single season with 2,105 in 1984.

“He’s big, he’s fast, and he doesn’t hesitate,” Dickerson said of the 6-foot-1, 227-pound Gurley. “Guys who dance around, those aren’t the guys who make it. The guys who make the quick decision and just hit it, those are the guys who do it. And he’s that kind of guy. When he sees a hole, he don’t mess around.”

Dickerson and Gurley met when the Rams trained with the Dallas Cowboys last summer in Oxnard. where Fisher paid homage to the 55-year-old NFL icon — who still looks like he could play — by putting him in the huddle for a play during a non-contact walk-through drill. Just before doing so, Fisher informed his offensive linemen that they were going to have the honor of blocking for the great Eric Dickerson — perhaps a hint of things to come when Gurley got well.

“Even when I played I knew that one day my day would come when this would all be over,” Dickerson said. “For Jeff to let me run that last play in practice — that’s all I did because it’s all I can do any more — that was a thrill for me. I wrote him a note on a picture and said, ‘Thanks for letting me carry the rock one last time.’”

Gurley was watching at the time, just as Dickerson is watching him now. While acknowledging the long-time contribution of running back Steven Jackson, who wore No. 39, the Rams point out that Hall of Famer Marshall Faulk wore No. 28, Dickerson No. 29 and Gurley No. 30. A natural progression.

Gurley leads the NFL with 213 yards in the fourth quarter and is the only player with three runs of at least 45 yards, one in each of the last three games. Last Sunday, Gurley gained an astounding 97 yards after contact. He runs through arm tackles as if they’re turnstiles.

“If you just watch his highlights, I don’t know if you truly appreciate the tough yards that he gets as well,” Rams linebacker James Laurinaitis said. “Being able to see him in person, the thing that stood out to me when he first got here is just how explosive he is. His patience, his vision, and just how he knows when to take off.”

The patience is what’s especially impressive to Snead, who has a laptop on his desk that’s connected to a large video screen in the corner of his office. He can pull up any play from any game or practice with a few clicks, then dissect it in frame-by-frame detail.

Although Dickerson talked about how Gurley doesn’t dance and just hits a hole, Snead is able to show how the young back patiently waits for a crease to develop — as opposed to simply trying to run over defenders — before making his move. It all happens in an instant, almost too quick for a cognitive process.

Gurley had to exercise the same patience during his healing process. The Rams considered unveiling him for their Week 2 game against the Washington Redskins, but Gurley told Fisher toward the end of the week that he wasn’t quite ready to go. That wasn’t easy for a rookie champing at the bit to prove himself.

The pivotal play, the one Gurley needed to experience, came in practice the next week. Snead dialed it up on his laptop for review. The Rams were in shorts but with shoulder pads and helmets. The backup center was in, and he was knocked back about four yards by a defensive tackle, causing him to collide with Gurley coming out of the backfield. It was a huge body launched squarely into Gurley’s surgically repaired knee.

The footage is silent, but you can almost hear the Rams gasp as Gurley’s legs are swept from under him and he is upended.

In a blink, the rookie popped to his feet and ran 25 yards downfield.

“Coach,” he said as he returned to the huddle, “I’m ready to go.”

sam.farmer@latimes.com

Twitter: @LATimesfarmer