{"id":133738,"date":"2025-06-16T06:33:08","date_gmt":"2025-06-16T06:33:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/133738\/"},"modified":"2025-06-16T06:33:08","modified_gmt":"2025-06-16T06:33:08","slug":"cardinals-rb-trey-benson-eyeing-co-rb1-role-with-james-conner-in-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/133738\/","title":{"rendered":"Cardinals RB Trey Benson eyeing co-RB1 role with James Conner in 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Second-year RB Trey Benson envisions a bigger role and more opportunities for him in the run game in 2025.<\/p>\n<p>The <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/sportsdata.usatoday.com\/football\/nfl\/teams\/arizona-cardinals\/355\" data-autotag=\"c6331531-478d-4c7a-b93a-28f5b26af3f9\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Arizona Cardinals<\/a> had one of the league&#8217;s top rushing attacks in 2024, led by James Conner&#8217;s nearly 1,100 yards. Trey Benson, a rookie drafted in the third round last year, contributed more in the second half, although missed the final three games with an ankle injury.<\/p>\n<p>The clear backup to Conner, he finished his first NFL season rushing for 291 yards and a touchdown on 4.6 yards per attempt. He also had six receptions for 59 yards.<\/p>\n<p>In Year 2, Benson believes he will make a much bigger impact.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I feel like I&#8217;ll get more opportunities and help James out more,&#8221; Benson said during mandatory minicamp this past week. &#8220;I feel like we can have two RB1s on this team, and that&#8217;s my mindset this year is two RB1s.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Head coach Jonathan Gannon has spoken highly of Benson in terms of the type of playmaker he and the team believe Benson can be.<\/p>\n<p>He added about seven pounds in the offseason and wants to add some power and force to his already elite speed, trying emulate more how Conner runs.<\/p>\n<p>Getting more from Benson would be huge. Conner is now 30 years old and, while he has had consecutive 1,000-yard seasons, he has never played every game in a season in his career and set a career-high in rushing yards (1,094), total yards (1,508) and in touches (283).<\/p>\n<p>Imagine Conner and Benson combining for 1,500 rushing yards and 1,800 total yards from scrimmage with double-digit touchdowns. That, combined with the production the Cardinals should get from tight end Trey McBride and receiver Marvin Harrison Jr., and that offense could be lethal in 2025.<\/p>\n<p>Get more Cardinals and NFL coverage from Cards Wire&#8217;s Jess Root and others by listening to the latest on the Rise Up, See Red podcast. Subscribe on <a href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/show\/27gxR7Oml5yVPywhOG8KHR?si=cGJ0FN6aRBquiLus5nj7rw&amp;nd=1&amp;dlsi=05e790ef05a641b8\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Spotify<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/music.youtube.com\/playlist?list=PL9sICHPD_aT9zxnG7dJj6izJWgMhLMh_U&amp;si=rpNldnLNN-_DdW8R\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">YouTube<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/itunes.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/the-rise-up-see-red-podcast\/id670822447?mt=2\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Apple podcasts<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Second-year RB Trey Benson envisions a bigger role and more opportunities for him in the run game in&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":133739,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2078],"tags":[247,265,375,390,2604,15439,1327,2622,7,5921,469,757,1070,7992,7994,7993,248,267,88,6,245,537,530,9,266,2340,25211,6042],"class_list":{"0":"post-133738","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arizona-cardinals","8":"tag-american","9":"tag-american-football","10":"tag-arizona","11":"tag-arizona-cardinals","12":"tag-arizonacardinals","13":"tag-benson","14":"tag-cardinals","15":"tag-conner","16":"tag-football","17":"tag-harrison","18":"tag-james","19":"tag-james-conner","20":"tag-jr","21":"tag-marvin","22":"tag-marvin-harrison","23":"tag-mcbride","24":"tag-national","25":"tag-national-sports","26":"tag-news","27":"tag-nfl","28":"tag-overall","29":"tag-overall-positive","30":"tag-positive","31":"tag-sports","32":"tag-sports-news","33":"tag-trey","34":"tag-trey-benson","35":"tag-trey-mcbride"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133738"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133738\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/133739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}