Wide Receiver

Tulane

6-0 206

40 time: 4.57

Draft board overall prospect rank: #65

Draft board wide receiver rank: #7

Overall rating: 75*

             3/27/10: Jeremy Williams would be one of my favorite wide receivers of this draft class if it weren’t for two things, an ugly history of injuries, and the lack of experience and consistency as a result of those injuries. Williams has very nice reliable hands and good experience succeeding and putting up huge numbers in a Pro Style offense. Last year he caught 84 passes for 1113 yards and 7 touchdowns for a team that didn’t have a great passing game. He had 84 of his team’s 234 catches, 1113 of their 2436 receiving yards, and 7 of their 13 passing touchdowns. All of their, remember, is in a true Pro Style offense so the learning curve is going to be much smaller for him when he gets drafted. He has good hands. He runs good routes. He knows how to get open and, more importantly possibly, he doesn’t necessarily need to be open to catch the ball. He’s very good at making catches against tight coverage and made his quarterbacks look much better than they actually were last year. He doesn’t have breakaway speed. In fact, his speed is fairly sub par and that hurts him at the next level, but he does have experience running on end arounds and returning kicks and showed very good open field presence on those, though his speed is still fairly limited and I wouldn’t call him a running back in the open field with the way he breaks tackles. He breaks a few, but not a ton. He’s a very smart player. He’s very humble by nature and he catches the ball at it’s highest point with an NFL caliber leap. However, the injuries are there. He has 2 ACL tears in his career at Tulane. This not only doesn’t bode well for his future, as scouts try to predicate what he will be like in the future and how that knee will hold up, but it also makes him a bit of a one year wonder. He’s looked good in flashes before, but he really only has one good year of production, and even that was against not the toughest competition. I would take Jeremy Williams in the second round, probably, though I, obviously have not gotten a chance to check out his knee myself, nor would I know what I was looking at if I did. If individual team doctors give a favorable review on his knee, he could go as high as the 2^nd round, and remember, all it takes is one. Then again, if that doesn’t happen, he could slip to the 4^th where he could be a huge steal if he stays healthy. He has borderline 1^st round talent if he can stay healthy and adjust to a tougher level of competition, which is probably going to be a lot easier than some college style offense guys trying to transition to a real Pro Style scheme.    

NFL Comparison: Nate Burleson

*=For a breakdown of what this means, click here