But during Wednesday’s minicamp practice, the potential of Jameson Williams as a huge difference-maker was on display, especially during full-team drills.
Williams is mostly repping with the second-team offense, but on Thursday he did exactly what the 12th-overall pick in the draft should do: dominate a bunch of backups.
During an 11-on-11 drill, where the offense started around their own 30-35 yard line, Williams immediately kicked the drive off with back-to-back catches from Nate Sudfeld for a combined 36 yards. Sudfeld went back to him again on the next pass, but rookie cornerback Starling Thomas V likely would’ve drawn a flag on the play for clear pass interference.
Later in practice, the team worked on a red-zone opportunity: The offense started at the 10-yard line with only 10 seconds to score a touchdown. The first-team offense struggled to find the end zone with the defense playing with eight guys in coverage—several just waiting on the goal line. But on the very first play of the session for the second team, Williams burst open by a few steps along the back of the end zone and Sudfeld found him for the easy score.
There is still a ways to go for Williams, and several times during Wednesday’s practice you could see receivers coach Antwaan Randle-El having long conversations with him, but this was a big step in the right direction.
Here are five other standouts from Wednesday’s practice:
Jahmyr Gibbs
It’s been a relatively quiet start to minicamp for Gibbs, as he’s mostly made impressions during individual drills for his explosiveness and his speed. And while I’ve seen more drops than I’d like out of him through a handful of practices, Wednesday was a showcase of just how dangerous he can be.
During 11-on-11s, Gibbs took a quick slant—overextending to catch it—and likely would have taken it to the house for a 40+ yard gain, beating out the linebacker in coverage and splitting the defensive backs. Later during 7-on-7s, he cleanly beat Jalen Reeves-Maybin for another potentially huge gain.
One last important note on Gibbs: during a section of positional drills, the quarterbacks are working solely with the receivers, while the tight ends and running backs are at the other end of the field. During that portion of practice, Gibbs has consistently been with the wide receivers.
Also interesting during those set of drills: Jared Goff stepped in and made sure he was throwing to five specific players in the rotation, even if it wasn’t his turn. Those five players: Kalif Raymond, Jameson Williams, Amon-Ra St. Brown, Marvin Jones Jr., and Gibbs. When the tight ends came into the group, Goff made sure to throw to two: Brock Wright and Sam LaPorta.
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