- Jameson Williams started to flash potential last season: Williams was a top-12 draft pick despite tearing his ACL just months before the draft. In 2024, he began to show why he was drafted so early.
- New offensive coordinator John Morton has praised Williams: The Detroit Lions have several star players on offense. However, Morton has said this will be a breakout year for Williams, who could land at the same level as the team's other elite options.
- Subscribe to PFF+: Get access to player grades, PFF Premium Stats, fantasy football rankings, all of the PFF fantasy draft research tools and more!
Estimated Reading Time: 8 minutes
PFF’s Fantasy Football Player Profile series delivers the most in-depth fantasy football analysis available for the 2025 season.
Using PFF’s exclusive data, we evaluate player performance, competition for touches and how teammates and coaching staffs will impact each player's fantasy football outlook.
Last updated: 7:15 a.m. Monday, May 26
Player Performance
The Detroit Lions made Jameson Williams the 12th overall pick of the 2022 NFL Draft, despite his ACL tear just months before the draft. He returned for the last six games of his rookie season, playing at most 18 snaps in a contest. He touched the ball only twice, but both went for 40 or more yards.
Williams missed the first four games of the 2023 season due to the NFL’s gambling policy, and he was then eased into action, playing less than 50% of snaps over his first four games back. After the Lions' Week 9 bye, Williams played between 50%-70% of snaps over the rest of the season. His impact was minimal, with three total touchdowns, no games over 70 receiving yards and no games over five receptions.
He started Week 1 of 2024, and it was the best game of his career to that point. He played 85.2% of offensive snaps and caught five passes for 121 yards and a touchdown. He played 79.3% of snaps over the season, excluding the two games for which he was suspended due to the league’s PED policy. Williams gained at least 75 receiving yards in more than half of his games and averaged a touchdown every other game. There were two games early in the season where he was held to single-digit yards, but after his suspension, his floor was 8 PPR points. From Weeks 10-18, Williams averaged 15.3 PPR points per game, which ranked 22nd among wide receivers.
Projected Role
Williams started his career as strictly a deep threat. He ranked in the top seven in average depth of target and deep target rate from 2022 to 2023 among wide receivers with at least 250 routes. Last season, the goal became to get him the ball in more situations. He increased his deep targets by two, his medium targets by 18 and his short targets by 21 compared to 2023. His 8.4 yards after the catch per catch was the best among wide receivers last season.
His role with the Lions has always been unique. Early in 2023, Williams played more on early downs and less on late downs, and then that flipped in the middle of the season. Last year, he was an X receiver in base with Amon-Ra St. Brown at Z, and then both players shifted to three-receiver sets, with Tim Patrick taking the X spot. While the Lions drafted Isaac TeSlaa, who was more of a slot or Z receiver in college, his measurables suggest he should be an X receiver — and not much of a threat to Williams’ playing time.
Impact of Teammates
With Ben Johnson off to helm the Bears, John Morton now leads the Lions' offense. Morton has been part of several offenses with different wide receiver rotations at each stop. His run-to-pass ratios have also changed, so it’s hard to tell how much his offense could help or hurt Williams. In his one season as an offensive coordinator with the New York Jets in 2017, he had a clear top two receivers in Chosen Anderson and Jermaine Kearse. While Williams is an undersized receiver, his PFF run-blocking grade last season was among the highest for wide receivers under 200 pounds, and higher than that of Amon-Ra St. Brown. He shouldn’t lose any playing time in the base offense despite his size.
Morton and new wide receivers coach Scottie Montgomery have given a lot of praise to Williams early in the offseason for his preparation, and they are expecting a breakout year. While early offseason praise doesn’t always lead to results during the season, it is certainly better than not receiving plaudits at all. While there is plenty of competition for touches in Detroit, there is at least a chance Williams can move up the priority list while others slip down. The Lions have the talent to have another great season on offense, and in that case, there should be at least two to three wide receivers who excel.
Williams will continue to have Jared Goff as his quarterback. Goff is one of the most accurate passers in the NFL, and accurate passes are crucial to gaining yards after the catch. Goff has been an asset to Williams, and that should continue to be the case. This also means that if Goff were to get injured, it could negatively impact Williams more than it impacts the other players in Detroit's offense.
Bottom Line
Jameson Williams became more than a deep threat in 2024, which allowed him to be a top-30 wide receiver, despite playing for a Detroit Lions team with several fantasy assets at the top 10 of their position. With a new offensive coordinator, Williams could get a larger part of the Lions' pie this season, at the expense of one or more players, due to his unique talents and playmaking ability.
Footnotes
- Statistics in tables and charts were chosen based on their ability to predict future fantasy performance on a per-game or per-opportunity basis or to describe the player relative to others at the same position.
- “Opportunities” are defined as passing dropbacks, rushing attempts and routes run as a receiver.
- Numbers are provided either by season or based on the past three years. For rookies, only college statistics are included. For non-rookies, only NFL statistics are considered, regardless of whether they played in college within the previous three years.
- As college competition is easier than NFL competition, most rookies are likely to see a decline from their historical numbers.
- Only FBS data is considered for college players and comparisons.
- Kneel-downs are removed from rushing data to provide cleaner quarterback rushing rate statistics.
- The table colors in this article range from blue (indicating good/high) to red (indicating bad/low).
- All percentiles and color codings compare the given player to others with a high sample of opportunities. Generally, the cutoff is one-third of the possible opportunities in the sample. If a player does not meet the threshold, they are still included in the comparison, though their results may appear better or worse than expected due to the smaller, less predictive sample size.
- Information on utilization classifications and their importance can be found here for running backs, wide receivers and tight ends.
© 2025 PFF - all rights reserved.