Photo: Scott Grau/Icon Sportswire
Back in February 2023, Detroit Lions’ OC Ben Johnson said the team planned on using Jameson Williams “all over” the formation, lining him up at X, Z and Slot receiver.
“I know this: When you get speed in the slot, that’s very hard to defend,” he said.
So far, the Lions have kept opponents guessing as to where Williams will line up throughout his young NFL career, dividing his time almost evenly out wide and in the slot. He’s lined up more than 20% of the time in each spot (left wide, left slot, right slot, right wide).
Detroit began ramping up his overall route rate after their Week 9 bye last season. By the time the playoffs rolled around, Jameson Williams was running about as many routes per game as Josh Reynolds and Sam LaPorta.
Now, with an entire offseason under his belt and his salad days firmly behind him, the kid they call Jamo looks poised to ascend and fully unleash his speed on the league.
Through Week 4, he has run the same number of routes as Amon-Ra St. Brown.
The big change? Williams is running a more complete route tree to stress the defense at all three levels of the field, earning targets on playbook staples like curls, digs and outs.
If we add a couple more branches to the tree, we can get a better sense of how Jamo can perform as a full-time WR by first looking back at how often he ran key routes at Alabama.
In college, Williams earned most of his targets on curls (87), digs (43), slants (34), outs (28), corners (23), deep crosses (18), drags (16), and whips (3). He also had 19 targets on screens but those haven’t been as prevalent in his NFL route tree.
If we dig a little deeper, though, the SIS DataHub Pro can provide a more nuanced understanding of how he compared to some of his peers on these routes in 2021-22.
| WR | Catchable Target % | Catchable Catch% | AirYard% | YAC% |
| Chris Olave | 86% | 82% | 74% | 26% |
| Drake London | 81% | 84% | 72% | 28% |
| Garrett Wilson | 76% | 92% | 71% | 29% |
| Jameson Williams | 77% | 81% | 59% | 41% |
| Wan’Dale Robinson | 84% | 84% | 74% | 26% |
Jameson Williams caught 81% of his targets on key routes that were deemed catchable during his junior season at Bama. That’s generally in line with other top performers, if a smidge low.
Once the ball was in his hands, though, Jamo’s receiving yardage splits paint the portrait of a downfield menace who could create after the catch.
Fast-forward to the NFL and it’s encouraging to see similar splits through his past 15 games, especially when compared against others during the same timeframe (since Week 10 of the 2023 season, including playoffs).
| WR | Catchable Target % | Catchable Catch % | AirYards% | YAC% |
| Amon-Ra St. Brown | 79% | 86% | 67% | 33% |
| Jameson Williams | 79% | 85% | 62% | 38% |
| CeeDee Lamb | 85% | 87% | 58% | 42% |
| Nico Collins | 80% | 92% | 73% | 27% |
| Rashee Rice | 85% | 83% | 45% | 55% |
Looking at Detroit, Dallas, Houston, and Kansas City — all playoff teams from a year ago that retained their offensive play callers — Jamo compares favorably to teammate Amon-Ra St. Brown and Nico Collins.
Perhaps most impressive is how often Williams is able to consistently generate YAC further downfield, as evidenced by his YAC relative to his deeper Average Depth of Target (ADoT).
| WR | ADoT | YAC/Rec |
| Amon-Ra St. Brown | 8.9 | 4.2 |
| Jameson Williams | 11.6 | 6.3 |
| CeeDee Lamb | 6.5 | 4.5 |
| Nico Collins | 10.2 | 3.7 |
| Rashee Rice | 5.6 | 6.8 |
As Alex Vigderman recently wrote, Nico Collins had the best receiving season in the NFL on a per-route basis in 2023. Through the first four weeks of 2024, the star wideout is picking up right where he left off.
Nico Collins is currently tops in the NFL among wideouts with 15 Receiving Total Points. Essentially, this means Collins was responsible for adding 15 points to the Texans’ scoreboard through their first four games. Jameson Williams is currently 5th among wideouts with 11 Total Points.
⇒ If you’re curious as to what goes into Total Points and how we arrived at that calculation, our signature metric received a major overhaul this offseason. ⇐
Now, it would be extremely bullish to project a third-year breakout for Jamo on par with what Nico accomplished in 2023.
However, it wouldn’t be all that surprising if Williams and Collins ended up with similar stat lines in 2024, as both play opposite target-commanding WRs in Amon-Ra St. Brown and Stefon Diggs and each have plenty of receiving competition elsewhere with Sam LaPorta and Jahmyr Gibbs, Tank Dell and Dalton Schultz.
Head coach Dan Campbell called Jameson Williams a “man on a mission” and the most improved player throughout the Lions offseason. If he keeps up this pace and continues to stretch the defense, Jamo will be a major factor in the Lions reaching their first Super Bowl.
