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          Alvin Kamara gives inspired performance after friend's death

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          Kamara says it's 'legendary' to be mentioned with Jim Brown (1:30)

          Alvin Kamara reacts to joining Jim Brown as the only players 23 years and younger to have three three-touchdown games. (1:30)

          • Mike Triplett, ESPN Staff WriterNov 5, 2018, 05:00 PM
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            • Covered Saints for eight years at New Orleans Times-Picayune
            • Previously covered LSU football, San Francisco 49ers
            • Iowa native and University of Iowa graduate
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          NEW ORLEANS – The first indication that Alvin Kamara wasn't going to be denied on Sunday came on the first play of the game.

          He was hit 3 yards behind the line of scrimmage on a jet sweep. But he shed the tackle and wound up gaining 5 yards.

          Three hours later, Kamara had 116 yards from scrimmage, three touchdowns and maybe a dozen of those broken tackles to help the New Orleans Saints break free as the team to beat in the NFC with a 45-35 victory over the Los Angeles Rams.

          That included a trademark "Wait, how did he do that?" 11-yard touchdown run through a group of four defenders to end that opening drive. And it included a leaping hurdle over another defender later in the first half, among other highlights.

          We've seen similar performances from Kamara before. In fact, it was his third three-touchdown performance of the season, which put him in extremely rare air. According to the Elias Sports Bureau, Kamara joined Jim Brown as the only players in NFL history with three three-touchdown performances in a season at the age of 23 or under. (Brown went on to win the NFL MVP award when he did it in 1958).

          But Kamara also had some added inspiration for this particular game. A close friend of his, a New Orleans rapper known as Young Greatness, was shot and killed last Monday morning -- just hours after Kamara had talked to him and made plans to meet up with him when the Saints returned from their win at Minnesota.

          "It was tough," Kamara said after Sunday's win. "I actually talked to him before we took off from Minnesota and we were supposed to link up. And when we landed, I got the news, and I went to the scene. It's just hard, losing anybody. That's a close friend of mine for a long time. So it's tough, I've just been trying to deal with that."

          At Kamara's request, Young Greatness's hit "Moolah" was played in the Mercedes-Benz Superdome during pregame warm-ups -- as NOLA.com reported.

          "I mean that's my boy, and I just felt like that's something I wanted to do, and I'm happy they played it," Kamara said. "And that just gave me a little boost. I know he would've been here going crazy."

          Kamara met Young Greatness (Theodore Jones) years before he came to New Orleans in 2017, since he worked with Kamara's uncle, hip-hop mogul Kevin "Coach K" Lee. Kamara said his friend regularly attended Saints home games.

          "Most definitely it was [on my mind]," Kamara said. "He's been to a lot of games. And I just had it in the back of my mind he'd be talking, going crazy and talking mess. I mean that's my boy, I'm gonna miss him."

          Kamara also overcame an illness this week that forced him to miss practice on Thursday. He returned to practice Friday with a bottle of night-time cold medicine displayed prominently in his locker (endorsement deal, anyone?).

          By Sunday, he looked like he had recovered to about 120 percent, whether that was because of the added motivation from his friend's death or the added motivation from playing against the Rams -- or simply because that's how ridiculously good and rare Kamara's skill set is.

          "I don't even know, really," Kamara said of his first touchdown run, which included key blocks by left tackle Terron Armstead and tight end Josh Hill, among others -- as well as Kamara eluding three mostly-unblocked defenders. "It was good blocking. Sometimes plays stretch out longer than they need to. Just tried to stay alive, keep it alive, got in there and squeezed in there somehow."

          When quarterback Drew Brees was asked about Kamara's ability to make tacklers miss, he said, "Yeah, man, he is a smooth runner, he is an elusive runner. It's just one of these guys that plays with great body control and leverage, and he can shed tacklers."

          "It's pretty uncanny," Brees continued. "His ability both in the run game and the pass game, just to maneuver, and it looks so smooth it barely looks like he's moving, But he's covering ground, making people miss, and obviously some great results today. The first touchdown, the second touchdown, there's a couple where he was just impressive."

          Kamara now has a staggering 917 yards from scrimmage and 12 touchdowns in just eight games this season -- putting him on pace to shatter the 1,554 scrimmage yards and 14 touchdowns he scored during his NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year campaign.

          A lot of that came during fellow running back Mark Ingram's four-game suspension to start this season (Kamara led the NFL with 611 yards from scrimmage and was tied for first with six touchdowns through those four games).

          Now that Ingram is back, I've been describing Kamara as more of a "1A" compared to Ingram's "1B." There could still be some run-heavy game plans or blowouts where Ingram gets more work than Kamara.

          But there will also be games like this where Kamara takes over simply because he has that type of game-breaking ability.