Ryan Williams: Boy Wonder
Ryan Williams is the first athlete to ever make me feel old. If you’re unaware, arguably the best college football player on arguably the best team in the country was born on February 9th 2007. For reference, on February 10th, 2007 Barack Obama announced his candidacy for president, making Ryan Williams barely older than the earliest days of the Obama administration.
It’s not often that a true freshman even gets into a college football game. Usually somebody has to get injured or suspended for the coach to go far enough down the depth chart to go with the freshman. Really think back to the amount of great true freshman players you’ve seen- Johnny Manziel, Ja’Marr Chase, Herschel Walker, Orlando Pace- these players are few and far between. For most freshmen, college football is ritual humiliation. They get in for a few snaps, look like a freshman, and then are a new player by the time they hit their junior or senior year and start getting into games. That being said, Ryan Williams is much closer to the Ja’marr Chase/Johnny Manziel freshman experience.
Ryan Williams is what I would call a “reverse redshirt.” In college sports, you can choose a number of players every year to “redshirt”- what this does is it allows the player to put a year of eligibility in the bank while continuing to train with the team and stay in school. For example, if a freshman player is clearly undersized or unready to play the coach can make the decision to redshirt him, allowing him to take that year to train and still have the ability to play for four years after the redshirt season is over. Instead of doing that, Ryan Williams was so ready to play college football he reclassified his class from 2025 to 2024 so that he could graduate early and get to Tuscaloosa.
Through four games, Ryan Williams has 16 catches for 462 yards and 5 touchdowns. Every third ball Williams catches is a touchdown and all of them are stupid. Not stupid in the sense they are bad plays, rather stupid in the sense that it feels like each of these touchdowns was scripted by a low-level deity that loves Alabama football as much as they love fucking with people. Ryan Williams doesn’t have a professional football player I would compare him to, rather he’s Alabama Football’s Roadrunner and the defensive backs unlucky enough to guard him are Wile E. Coyote. Every Ryan Williams catch is him painting a tunnel on the 40 yard line, running through it, and then watching as whatever poor defensive back who he’s already ten yards ahead of runs directly into the wall and then questions what happened to the tunnel.
The game winning catch he had against Georgia is the best football play I’ve seen a wideout make this year. With a little over two minutes to go in the game, Jalen Milroe unleashed a shot to Williams down the sideline. Williams keeps his eye on the ball, jumps, readjusts midair to a slightly under thrown ball, makes the catch, turns while still in the air, lands, and immediately turns upfield. He gets past the 40 and sees two players, both headed straight for him. Oh no! As one defender tries to wrap him up, Williams pulls the smoothest spin move I have ever seen a teenager make, slipping out of the tackle and making both defensive players run into each other before he settles into the end zone for the go-ahead touchdown.
Like come on dude, as a defensive back what are you supposed to do? A wide receiver can have ONE of Ryan Williams’ footwork, body control, hand-eye coordination, and catching ability and be a star in the NFL. What happens when there’s a guy with all four? The guy should be in his senior year of high school and instead he might be the best receiver in the SEC.
Over the last decade or so, Alabama has developed a “type” at receiver. After Amari Cooper got drafted, Nick Saban decided to just keep recruiting Amari Cooper. He was going for wiry receivers between about 5’10” and 6’1” that were fast with good footwork. Devonta Smith, Jerry Jeudy, Jalen Waddle, John Metchie- these are all guys all fit the mold of “Alabama Receiver” and I think Ryan Williams is the ultimate example of this. At six feet even and 175 pounds he’s very similar to Devonta Smith’s college measurements, and so far he’s also very similar to Smith’s play during his Heisman trophy winning 2020 season.
If Ryan Williams decides to enter the 2027 draft after three college seasons (the absolute earliest he could enter the NFL Draft) he will be 20 years and two months old, which will make him the youngest person selected in the NFL draft since Tremaine Edmunds in the 2018 draft. These players don’t come around very often. Ryan Williams will probably lead the Tide in receiving for the rest of this year and the next two years after that. He might be the best wide receiver in the country right now, just imagine his game in two years.
