With Jameson Williams back, the Lions are a team no one wants to play
The Detroit Lions are 3-1 with a top-10 offense and a top-five defense, and they’re about to get 2022 first-round pick Jameson Williams back from a gambling suspension.
That makes an already explosive Lions team one of the most dangerous in the NFL, and the rest of the league has officially been put on notice.
Williams isn’t just a really talented receiver. He possesses something arguably no other wideout on the roster does: the ability to turn any play into a home run.
Williams is fast, he’s dynamic, he’s agile and he is a pure playmaker, which just adds another dimension to the Lions’ passing attack.
“I’ll never forget Mike Wallace, he was the same way,” receivers coach Antwaan Randle El told reporters on Tuesday. “He took a shallow route and took it 60 yards. It was just like, ‘What? What happened?’ because it just happened so fast. That’s the way I see (Williams), in terms of his speed and being able to use it. So, we’ll get there.”
Williams has been limited since Detroit drafted him 12th overall last year. He recorded just one reception in six games as a rookie, but that one reception was a microcosm of what he’s capable of with the ball in his hands.
He blew past the Minnesota Vikings defense and hauled in a 41-yard touchdown uncovered with the nearest defender a good five or so yards away.
“We know our offense, and putting him back in the mix, how much further we can go,” Randle El added. “Again, we’ve got to make sure everybody understands the humbleness part of it. It’s not like he’s the fix-all, be-all from that standpoint, but he brings a different element us and many other teams don’t have, just in terms of his speed and the way he runs down the field.”
It's not lost on Williams, or the Lions coaches, that the 22-year-old wideout has missed a season and a half after suffering an ACL tear at Alabama and then his suspension for violating the NFL’s gambling policy, which has robbed Williams of 15 NFL games since last September.
But just because he hasn’t been on an NFL field on Sundays, don’t expect Williams to be rusty.
“I did a lot of catching (during my suspension),” he said, referencing the two-a-days he put himself through away from the team facility. “I was doing like a hundred a day. It was every day. You can do the math on that. It was a lot of catches.”
Getting Williams back is a nice feather in the cap for Lions head coach Dan Campbell. But the third-year coach made sure to tell everyone to have realistic expectations for a player who’s only played 78 offensive snaps over the last year and 10 months.
“It’s just about polishing all the little things and we also know if he does play, he can’t play 60 plays,” Campbell said. “That’s not smart, so we can’t do that to him.”
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