Jameson Williams walked up to the podium for the first time ever for a postgame interview, and it was clear he was still beaming from his impressive 2024 debut. He was still holding onto the “Sunday Night Football” Player of the Game ball he was awarded after the game, and he was still wearing that ear-to-ear smile that defines Williams’ affable personality.
“I ain’t never did this before,” Williams said with that grin, referring to the post-game press conference.
There were a lot of firsts from Williams on Sunday night. It was the first time he’s played in a Week 1 game. It was the first time he’s ever played more than 70% of the team’s offensive snaps. It was the first time he’s ever gotten over 100 receiving yards (previous high was 69), and it was the first time he’s accounted for over half of the team’s receiving yards (55.8%).
And according to Detroit Lions coach Dan Campbell, that’s just the tip of the iceberg for Williams.
“The best part of it was he didn’t even play his best ball. There’s still so much to clean up, but it also shows the work that he’s put in,” Campbell said. “He is improving, and he’s an improved player, and he wants it, and he keeps working on it. And he just, he keeps taking these steps. So as long as he keeps doing it, and keeps making plays, he’s just going to continue to get better. So yeah, I’m proud of him, I’m proud of where he’s at, but he’s got so much room to continue to grow.”
It seems important to point out that this was just Williams’ 12th career start of his young career. He may be entering his third season, but he’s still relatively inexperienced—and he’s still only 23 years old. He just completed his first ever full training camp, and this will be his first season as the team’s de facto No. 2 receiver behind Amon-Ra St. Brown.
And, yeah, Williams has no intentions of his 121-yard performance being the peak of his abilities.
“Me, personally, I expect to have a big game. I guess it’s just big to the world because it’s my first one,” Williams said. “But I plan to have a lot more. I don’t plan on this being my best game of my career. I plan on this just being the start of me being me.”
Having Williams as a legitimate threat is such a key component to this offense, and Sunday night against the Los Angeles Rams was a perfect example of why. The Rams defense took away Amon-Ra St. Brown (13 yards) and Sam LaPorta (45) yards for nearly the entire game. No other wideout even managed to garner a single target from Jared Goff. But that’s how an offense should operate. When a defense focuses on taking away a weapon or two, the other weapons step up.
“That’s just our offense. We knew that from jump that we got stats, we got ball players, one person don’t get going, we got other people to lean on,” Williams said. “The offense, just shout out to (offensive coordinator) Ben [Johnson], he called the right play(s), he knows the right situation to put us in. It was out there like in and out St. Brown a lot, double team him a lot. Somebody else has to make the plays, and I just made the plays when my number was called.”
