I'm not trying to be a homer with this pick, and if you watched our live NFL draft stream, then you would have seen the doc, Ethan Turner, and I going back and forth about Jameson Williams a little bit. But I truly do believe that we are in for a much better season from Jameson Williams than what we've seen from him so far.
I think it's really important to note that Jameson Williams hasn't had the easiest start to his career so far, and sometimes we have to take into consideration exactly what has happened and how that may have stopped his progression. To start things off, in his rookie year, he was still recovering from a torn ACL that he suffered during the college football championship game in January of that season. Then he was drafted by the Lions just a couple of months later in April. He wasn't even able to play until week 13, and even at that point, he was still seeing a limited snap count. They were going to work Jameson Williams in very slowly. They not only drafted him in the first round, but they moved up to do so. They wanted to protect their investment.
Unfortunately, in year two, he suffered a 4-game suspension that was actually supposed to be six for a gambling-related issue. Honestly, I don't even know how much of the story I believe. Apparently, he was in a team hotel room, and he was betting on sports other than football, which you're allowed to do, but you can't do it on team property even though it was a team hotel. It was a big mess, and probably honestly, he didn't even deserve a suspension. But neither here nor there, he got it, he dealt with it, and it was over.
After a four-game suspension, he then tried to work his way back in, but Josh Reynolds was still the number two wide receiver at that point. We would see Jameson Williams from time to time, but he wasn't really able to steal that role away from Josh Reynolds, partly because Reynolds and Goff had such a good connection with each other. We started to see the tides turn a little bit towards the end of the season last year. Over the course of his final three games of 2023, Jameson Williams was utilized a little bit more often. During those three games, he had 11 receptions on 16 targets for 159 receiving yards. Yeah, nothing crazy, not anything that you look at and say sign me up for, but at least it was a step in the right direction.
Then in the NFC Championship, the dude absolutely showed why he could be a huge playmaker at the NFL level. In the NFC championship game, he had 67 total yards on only three touches and scored two touchdowns. One of those touches was a 42-yard touchdown rush on an end-around play where he reached 18.4 miles per hour in the middle of that run. Jameson Williams can fly.
Now, the Lions have 118 vacated targets from 2023 that will be up for grabs this season. Amon-Ra St. Brown will be the number one target on this team, there's no denying that. Number two will be Sam LaPorta; absolutely, he's probably the second most valuable target on this team. But the number three target is going to be up for grabs. Could it end up being Jahmyr Gibbs? Absolutely. But Jameson Williams is going to have a much larger impact this season, and maybe he doesn't turn into a high-volume receiver. Jameson Williams could end up being one of those guys that maybe only sees 90 targets in a season, but if he catches 60-70 of those targets and turns those into a lot of big plays, we're going to see Jameson Williams score quite a few touchdowns. In fact, he could end up reaching seven or eight touchdowns this year on those big plays alone.
Just think about how the Lions' offense is constructed. Everybody knows the Lions are going to run the football, and they're going to run it well. You have to pay attention to David Montgomery and Jahmyr Gibbs out of the backfield, not only on the ground but through the air. Jahmyr Gibbs is a huge playmaker out of the backfield when it comes to the passing game, and David Montgomery, even though he doesn't get a whole lot of work in the passing game, does a lot with it when they utilize it. Then you have two guys that are fabulous over the middle of the field and on the outside: Amon-Ra St. Brown and Sam LaPorta absolutely decimate the intermediate portion of the field, which leaves Jameson Williams alone in one-on-one coverage on the outside. Very rarely are defenses going to commit a safety over the top to Jameson Williams because the safety is going to have to help Sam LaPorta and Amon-Ra St. Brown. They're not going to be able to let those guys get loose too often.
So once again, Jameson Williams may not see a ton of targets, but he's going to do some big things with the targets that he does see. Jameson Williams may be more of a best-ball bet and you draft him late and you utilize him in your lineup, and the dude can end up going off and help you win some weeks. When you take a look at just typical redraft leagues, it could be a little bit more difficult, and he's more of a wide receiver four on your team. But in the bye weeks or really good matchups for Detroit, considering the fact they're going to be indoors every single game but three of them this year, Jameson Williams could definitely be a guy that you rotate in and out of your lineup and reap the rewards later on.
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