Jameson Williams is a Tough Bet for Fantasy Football in 2023
Jameson Williams is a fascinating case study. He’s heading into his second season with 81 more yards from scrimmage than I had sitting on my couch last fall. Williams played in a half-dozen games but never tallied more than 25% of the offensive snaps. Along with missing the majority of his rookie season, he will also miss some of this season with the news of his suspension for violating the NFL’s gambling policy. We’ll set our opinions aside regarding that situation. The reality is that we’re looking at a wide receiver being taken in the 8th round that’s going to miss at least one-third of the season.
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Williams’ Rookie Year Production
Jameson Williams converted nine targets into one catch for 41 yards and took one handoff 40 yards down the field. That’s not a description of his best game. That's his whole season's worth of production in 2022. There’s just not much to talk about from his first year in the league. Looking back through historical comps for Williams, there’s one receiver that gives me some hope for Williams.
Eric Decker had a remarkably similar rookie year. He’s the only name on the list that I even recognize, so I won’t spend any time talking about the others. Needless to say, a vast majority of the comps are guys that completely fizzled out in their first year. Decker played sporadically as a rookie, never earning a start. He saw eight targets the entire year and gained just 106 yards. The WR had a third-year breakout that coincided with some guy named Peyton Manning playing QB for the Broncos. Jared Goff isn’t turning into Peyton anytime soon and we are getting a truncated season from Williams as it is. It’s extremely difficult to justify his price.
Analyzing Williams’ ADP
The opportunity cost to draft him over the guys going around him seems a bit high. There are running backs like Rachaad White and A.J. Dillon who I’ve written about recently, that I strongly prefer over 11 games of Williams.
Let’s set all that aside, though. Whether you’re playing in a tournament on Underdog or drafting a season-long team with your buddies, you still need to score points down the stretch. We’d expect somewhere in the range of 10-11 points per game from a wide receiver drafted in the range Williams is currently being drafted. So if he could score 110 PPR points by year-end, that would be a replacement-level performance.
The best performances from this ADP range in the past five seasons are Tyler Lockett (2022), Deebo Samuel (2021), Robert Woods (2018), and Brandin Cooks (2021). All four of those receivers broke 225 PPR points in their respective seasons. Those performances were over 14 points per game which is a big ask from Williams down the stretch. In the past five years, only 127-of-1,103 (11.5%) wide receivers have hit that threshold in PPR formats. So, we’re asking a guy who missed almost all of his rookie season to come in a third of the way through his second season and hit nearly a 90th-percentile outcome.
Our projections have him at 114 PPR Points which gets us to the replacement level but is nowhere near what we’d need for a league-winning breakout.
Outlook for Williams in the Lions Offense
Even if you believe that Williams can jump through all of those hoops in a vacuum, there's one other hoop we haven't even mentioned yet. Amon-Ra St. Brown is being drafted at the turn of the first and second rounds right now in Underdog drafts and the second to third turn in Yahoo redraft leagues. St. Brown had 90 receptions in his rookie year despite only getting the start in nine games. Then, he backed it up in his sophomore season with 106 catches on 146 targets. St. Brown averaged 11 yards per reception last season, showing a clear rapport with Goff.
Under Dan Campbell, the WR2 in the Lions offense has been under a 15% target share. Williams is a big-play threat, as evidenced by his 40-yard plays on the only two touches of his career so far. He's going to come into the season in Week 7, relying on big plays and trying to overcome a fully established WR1 on his team. Those aren't the types of bets I like to make in fantasy football.
Conclusions
You're bound to get an inflated ADP when you combine an exciting prospect with a potentially high-volume offense. The larger issue is his suspension. It would be easy enough to tell yourself a story about a second-year breakout, even considering his struggles in his rookie season, if he was going to be on the field in Week 1.
In redraft (Current ADP WR62, 14.04), I’m extremely hesitant to take him anywhere. Holding a zero in any roster spot for six weeks is severely limiting your team’s prospects. In best ball tournaments (UD ADP WR49), if he slips far enough I’ll scoop a few shares but only if I have Jared Goff, as well.
