Back in January, as the Detroit Lions parted ways for the offseason, wide receiver Jameson Williams told reporters what he would be focusing on.
"I want to get stronger for sure. That’s my main goal,” Williams said, via John Maakaron of SI.com. “I want to get a little stronger. Move around a little more frequently. When I go through traffic on routes, I’m getting pushed over. I just need to be able to hold my weight a little bit.”
Williams, according to Pro Football Focus numbers, was elite on crossing routes last season by many measures, but PFF also gave him five of his nine drops for the season on those routes. That points back to what he said about getting stronger and not getting "pushed over" (or set off-course) on those kind of routes, where there's naturally more defender traffic to navigate.
Pro Football Reference "credited' Williams with a league-high 12 drops last season, when had totaled seven drops over the previous two seasons. To his credit, he knew he had to figure out the issue during the offseason if he wants to take the next step in his evolution as a wide receiver.
Some of those drops were in big spots too, leading to just 617 of Williams' 1,271 intended air yards being completed (according to Sports Info Solutions).
Jameson Williams confirmed what his offseason focus was
Speaking to reporters during Week 2 of OTAs, Williams was asked about the specific areas he wanted to focus on during the offseason.
"Catching. That was my main thing, I wanted to get better at catching."
Asked how he specifically worked on catching the ball better, in terms of any specific drills he might have done in that process (perhaps alongside Amon-Ra St. Brown on the JUGS machine?), Williams suggested he didn't need to to focus that much on any physical reasons he dropped so many passes last season.
"It's a mind thing", Williams said. "It's a mind thing, to me."
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Whether the cause was primarily mental or physical, it seems Williams has figured out the reason for his epidemic of dropped passes last season. Drops are often a concentration issue more than someone simply having bad hands, and Williams confirmed that was the case for him.
If he has fixed last season's drops problem, a better-focused Williams stands to be an even more dangerous player in the Lions' offense moving forward.
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