Jameson Williams profile: Why the Detroit Lions drafted the WR in the NFL Draft

With the 12th pick in the 1st round of the NFL Draft the Detroit Lions selected wide receiver Jameson Williams. Here's what we know about the player.

Jameson Williams' Strengths

A top-100 overall recruit for Ohio State in 2019, Williams transferred over to Alabama two years later. The 6’1”, 180 pound receiver was having to play behind Chris Olave and Garrett Wilson, along with Jaxon Smith-Njigba, who’ll probably go the highest among them next year. Despite a loaded room of receivers in Tuscaloosa, he turned himself into the number one over John Metchie, catching 79 passes for 1,572 yards and 15 touchdowns. That made him a first-team All-American member. During the Tide’s National Championship run he left the game with a torn ACL.

Williams presents a vertical component that makes him extremely dangerous. You saw Bryce Young look his way quite a bit on go-routes even when basically doubled against two-high, if the deep man sat on it a little bit too much. He goes from even to a step behind, while combining it with an effective swipe-down.

When Williams gets matched up with safeties between the hashes and numbers it gets scary. He can take them vertically and break the structure of the defense to some degree. He's literally split safeties in two-high alignments, by running right through the middle of them and dusting whoever they had on him in the slot.

He also does a great job of setting up double-moves and once he creates that separation on the secondary break, he usually doesn’t give it up anymore. Williams really opened up the Bama offense and allowed them to score over 40 on a historically great Georgia defense in the SEC championship game, while the unit looked rather stagnant once he had to exit in the Natty. He posted an FBS-best 11 touchdowns of 30-plus yards in 2021.

With that being said, Williams is far from just a deep threat, he can run routes. Obviously, his speed is a big factor in the way he forces corners to open up their hips prematurely and creates separation when sticking his foot in the ground. He’s shifty off the line with a pretty diverse release package, incorporating shuffle-steps, in-and-out’s and other quick footwork, along with a pretty strong hand-swipe.

The wide receiver understands how to attack the blind spots of defenders and he can absolutely stop on a dime. He’s really tough to hip read, because he can come off the ball at 100 miles per hour, get to a dead-stop with his feet parallel to each other. He is then able to break effectively to the left or right, often times with a little trigger step at the top of the route, to throw DBs off. He straightens his path again after releasing from stacks and doesn’t give away where he’s going. As an indicator of his ability to create separation against man coverage, he was contested on just three of his 36 such targets this past season.

After the catch, once he’s really out there striding, He's very hard to catch. That’s why Bama did a lot of motions to his side and threw him slip screens to three-receiver sets, as well as make him the number three off orbit motions. If defenders aren’t hell-bent on protecting the sidelines, Williams has the juice to quickly get there and tip-toe along the white.

He’s a certified angle-killer for defensive pursuit. The best indication of his pull-away speed was probably last year’s SEC title game, when he caught a deep in-breaker at midfield against a bit of a coverage-bust. There was a safety ten yards ahead of him with what looked like a good angle and Williams just outran him to the opposite sideline for a touchdown. He added another long one on a little stutter-go later on in that game for good measure, where he ran past the corner and safety.

Williams can also make guys completely miss with some filthy sideway jukes. And he took those abilities to special teams as well, where he scored two kick return TDs last season.

Jameson Williams' Weaknesses:

However, Williams does present a spindly frame and his lack of strength comes into play when defenders are able to stab at his chest and establish that early contact. That’s why Alabama provided with a lot of free releases, which is a luxury he may not be afforded at the next level.

He’ll have to add some muscle in order to bring something in contested situations, where he only came up with four of his receptions last year. As great as the receiver room at Ohio State might have been recently, catching only 15 balls during his time in Columbus is a disappointment.

Williams is fairly close to being a non-factor as a blocker in the run game, at best taking corners off balance and occupying them with stutter releases. He obviously tore his ACL in the National title game and is unlikely to be ready for the start of the season.

Conclusion on Jameson Williams:

The word speed demon may not even do justice to what we see from Williams. Alabama has had a lot of fast receivers in recent years, including Henry Ruggs III and Jaylen Waddle in each of the last two drafts, who both reportedly run in the 4.2’s. None of them quite were able to just gain ground on defenders at full stride or defeat angles by the pursuit quite like this guy. If you’re looking to add speed to an offense or somebody who can create big plays, this is the man to do it.

The Lions traded up for this pick and they are clearly great believers in his talents.

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