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Following a 17-game rookie campaign in which he played every game and started 10, the Lions’ first-round pick gave his first NFL season a “C” or “C-plus” after Detroit’s season ended with a disappointing 9-8 finish and no playoffs.
According to Williams, he wanted to have a bigger impact on opposing quarterbacks.
“I think I have a good run game. I win some rushes, but I’m not winning at a rate I want to win,” Williams said.
“… If I were to grade myself, I’d probably give it a C, C+. Like I said, I could have done a lot of things better, but I’m still a rookie. It’s a different playing field than college. Just gotta adjust to that and just get better this offseason.”
On 446 snaps during his rookie season, Williams played the run on 220 and rushed the passer on 225 — a pretty even split.
To be entirely fair, he did come directly from a national championship run in college where he played 13 of 16 games, went directly into combine/draft prep and then straight into his rookie NFL season. That’s a lot of football over the course of 16 months. Not too surprising he was hit or miss his rookie season.
Next step is get him a full nfl offseason of training and to transform his body. It often takes DT’s a couple years to fully develop. He had some decent moments as a rookie now he needs to dominate the offseason training