Ryan Williams has gone from cover man to missing in action for Alabama, but why?
Published:
Alabama just played in arguably the most important game of the post-Nick Saban era. It was a game in which the Tide prevailed in a hostile atmosphere in which Ty Simpson was under pressure on 40% of his drop-backs. On a night where Alabama lost Jam Miller to injury, the battle-tested Tide quarterback attempted 35 passes.
Not a single one of them was to Ryan Williams.
As in, the preseason All-American and College Football ’26 cover man. Like, the guy who was being compared to Julio Jones after he had as many touchdown catches as any SEC true freshman receiver since Amari Cooper in 2012. But unfortunately, like Cooper, the guy billed as the next great Alabama receiver has endured a sophomore slump. He’s 20th in the SEC with 598 receiving yards, and he’s No. 22 in receiving yards in SEC play (378 yards). On top of that, he’s got 8 drops compared to just 8 missed tackles forced.
That came to a head in a 0-target Iron Bowl showing. Williams’ most notable play of the night might’ve been when he set a (legal) pick that freed up the aforementioned Miller, who was targeted on a swing pass but wasn’t looking or the ball. Outside of that, his name was virtually unheard of on the ABC broadcast.
What’s the deal? How could a player so decorated not get a single touch in such a meaningful game?
“He was out there. There’s nothing to read into there at all. There were opportunities where the ball could’ve found him,” Kalen DeBoer said Sunday (H/T The Tuscaloosa News). “The plays that … it’s not like they’re designed specifically for him. That’s really not how a lot of our offense is. There might be screens and things like that that are intentionally trying to get (players) touches. But as far as pass concepts, we just didn’t get to him in the route, or things like that.
“We’ve got to be intentional because he’s a playmaker for us. The ball just found some other guys and they made plays, like you saw with Isaiah Horton.”
Yes, Williams is still out there
He ran 22 routes and Simpson didn’t look his way, as opposed to Horton, who was a red-zone machine with 3 touchdowns on 28 routes.
Williams ran as many routes in the Iron Bowl as true freshman Lotzeir Brooks, which is not something anybody would’ve anticipated coming into the season but has become a much more likely scenario in a given game. Initially, the plan was for Williams to lock down the slot position. In the season opener at Florida State, Williams lined up in the slot on 54 of 60 snaps. But a 3-drop showing ended with him leaving the game with a concussion in an ugly Alabama loss. That opened the door for Brooks to become a factor in the slot. In the 10 games that Brooks has been healthy after the season-opening loss, he played in the slot almost exclusively between 19-34 times per game. Williams, meanwhile, has transitioned into more of a hybrid role that varies game to game.
In Week 9 at South Carolina, Williams lined up in the slot 39 times compared to 20 snaps out wide. The next game against LSU, that split flipped to 9 slot snaps and 18 out wide (that also included 3 backfield snaps). It was also the lone touchdown catch for Williams in Alabama’s last 7 games.
That was 1 of 4 contested catches that Williams has all season. He’s only had 7 such targets compared to 16 with a less pass-happy offense last season. Why? Is it not being on the same page as Ty Simpson? Is it related to where he lines up? Is it lingering effects of a leg injury that he suffered earlier in the season? Is it just mental?
Maybe it’s all of the above for someone who, in case you forgot, is only 18 years old. He had 7 drops last year, all of which happened after he burst onto the national stage against Georgia. He’s already over that this year with an SEC-high 8 drops, and among SEC receivers with at least 30 targets, he has the second-highest drop rate at 16.7%.
Perhaps another reason why Alabama hasn’t gone out of its way to manufacture touches for Williams is that half of those drops have come on throws that are 9 yards or less from the line of scrimmage. Having a 12.1% drop rate on targets in that range of the field has made him tough to trust.
But why then has it been such a struggle for Williams to at least be a field-stretcher and make splash plays downfield? Is that Simpson? Or is it an offense that’s been more prone to figuring out the best way to protect Simpson from blitz-heavy defenses?
Maybe it’s all of the above.
For what it’s worth, Williams caught 9 of 15 pass attempts that were 20 yards downfield. A 60% completion rate is No. 1 among SEC receivers with 10 such targets. Simpson has 53 downfield attempts (No. 4 in SEC), so it’s not that Alabama just doesn’t attack downfield, and Williams is still the most consistent option in that area, though he did drop a walk-in touchdown in the Georgia matchup in September. Alabama’s 3 other starting receivers all have 3-4 downfield catches apiece. Germie Bernard and Horton are instead more trusted than Williams on 3rd down.
That’s at the root of why Williams hasn’t ascended in the way that many believed he would after Georgia last year
Williams isn’t a move-the-chains receiver yet who can be consistently relied on to catch passes in traffic, and he doesn’t have the size to warrant the type of looks that his teammate, Horton, or 2024 classmate Cam Coleman get in the red zone. He’s on a team with a quarterback who can actually work through his progressions and, on a team with 3-4 pass catchers who have become go-to targets in a given game, quiet days at the office are somewhat inevitable.
Alternatively, perhaps the college football world collectively lost its mind after this play and assumed a play so absurd was the beginning of a legendary career that would be loaded with moments like this.
If Williams didn’t make that play, we wouldn’t be asking these questions about him going into the SEC Championship on Saturday. He’d still be heavily discussed as a former 5-star receiver, but most 17-year-olds don’t make one of the best plays you’ll ever see from a receiver, especially in a game that virtually everyone watched.
Everyone was watching that Iron Bowl, and Williams was nowhere to be found. All eyes will be on the Tide, wherever this postseason run ends up. Williams still figures to have plenty of opportunities to make his mark on Alabama’s 2025 story.
And if he doesn’t, well, surely there won’t be anything to read into there at all.
Connor O'Gara is the senior national columnist for Saturday Down South. He's a member of the Football Writers Association of America. After spending his entire life living in B1G country, he moved to the South in 2015.
