CINCINNATI — The Bengals had a former player get picked up and added to a practice squad this week. Kris Rhim reports that former running back Trayveon Williams is signing with the Chargers’ practice squad.

He’s played his entire six-year career prior to this season with Cincinnati, tallying 62 carries for 307 rushing yards and 15 catches for 74 yards. The veteran was a stalwart special teamer in his career as a trusted option for coordinator Darrin Simmons (873 career snaps).

Williams signed with the Patriots and Browns recently, but did not stick with either team. He was on the Cleveland roster in Week 1 when the Bengals beat the Browns 17-16. Williams was the Bengals’ backup running back for a significant chunk of last season. The fact that he’s on his third team in a matter of months shows how rough it was in the running back room last season.

This year is a bit different with Chase Brown leading the show. Samaje Perine and Tahj Brooks are also capable players.

Cincinnati is trying to keep its own run game going after the first good rushing for 142 yards against the Steelers. Brown averaged a season-high 9.8 yards-per-carry. He had runs of 37 and 28 yards en route to a 108-yard day.

How important is getting the ground game going?

“It does, because it inflates you and deflates them,” Taylor said last Thursday about the big impact of a rushing attack.”We tried to find as many ways as we could to keep feeding them (the running backs), and I thought those guys did a great job blocking. Samaje (Samaje Perine) had some good, tough runs, too. I don’t know what the stats are. It doesn’t really matter. He had some critical short-yardage; red-zone runs that were big for us.”

The Bengals up this weekend against the Jets at 1 p.m. ET on Sunday. They have a chance to get to 4-4 and 2-1 with Joe Flacco at quarterback.