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Matching, even exceeding, Sammie Coates’ production won’t be an issue for Auburn’s Duke Williams this season, but can the talented former JUCO transfer show out with expectations as the SEC’s next great wide receiver?
He’s going to try.
Williams may not be the flashy, ripped deep-threat of the Tigers’ former No. 1, but he’s a more polished pass-catcher by comparison and showed precision as a third-down target in his first campaign. Williams’ natural athletic ability and expertise at coming down with the football in traffic should show up early this fall in an offense that figures to be more potent through the air with Jeremy Johnson at quarterback.
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Many draft analysts like what Williams brings to the table.
“I think Duke Williams, with his size and physicality and the year he had coming over from the JUCO ranks, if he runs well, he could be in the late-first (round) to early- to mid-second round discussion,” Mel Kiper said recently during a pre-NFL Draft conference call.
Those words were coming off his first season at Auburn, a 45-catch, 730-yard campaign with a team-high five touchdowns despite missing three games. Williams has tremendous potential and his size — 6-foot-2 and now 232 pounds courtesy of Instagram — gives his game a different dimension, one NFL GMs tend to look at favorably during the scouting process.
With very little film on Williams (thus far), his senior season on the Plains could improve his draft stock into the mid-first round range as the first receiver taken off the board.
“The smaller corners in the NFL are going to have trouble with him but he’s got to round off his game, he’s got to become more complete, he’s got to understand the intricacies of playing the receiver position,” Kiper said of Williams. “It’s not just running down the field and then making a play. There’s a lot more into it.”
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Williams enters March as Auburn’s clear No. 1, but he’s still working his way back into game mode following a nagging MCL injury. You’d have to expect the Tigers to keep Williams’ workload light during spring practice, likely giving rising senior receiver Ricardo Louis much of the work in the passing game.
Highly-recruited out of Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College in the 2014 class, Williams had the luxury of being an unknown as it relates to his impact in the SEC as a first-year player. That changes this season, no longer hidden by the cloak of anonymity as the field-stretcher eyes a 1,000-yard, 12-touchdown campaign.
