Chad Williams, diamond in the rough?

[ericanadian]

Some beat writer projecting Williams to start across from Fitz now. Arians was pretty solid at picking out the undersized receivers (Antonio Brown, TY Hilton, John Brown) and he seemed to like this guy quite a bit. Granted, it seemed like each one was worse than the last and who knows what level of involvement he actually had with Brown as Brown broke out after he left. It's been interesting enough to me to pick him up in both my leagues. I don't hate Bradford for the short term and if Williams can take the number two receiver role, he's pretty much certain to be the number three target and likely the main target downfield.

Williams is 6 ft 1 and 205, I don't think that is really, "undersized"?

For some reason, I thought he was shorter. It kinda kills the narrative, but I'm not sure it's really a bad thing.

[Bot101]

I literally just dropped him last week after holding him most of last season and all this off season...

[smallxl]

I much prefer Mack Hollins

[sloth8u]

id rather own williams than fitz

[Plank]

Think the shelf life will be short on this one, meaning we should definitely find out early in the season whether or not he is something or not..

[ninotoreS]

Arians raved about Williams in practice last season. (Cant remember where I read that)

He publicly threw him under the bus later and deactivated him for most of the season.

I need to see Williams actually play good pro football before I'll get optimistic about him. The WR chart last year was very climbable, and yet Williams was a healthy scratch 10 of 16 weeks.

I will say that Christian Kirk is miscast as an outside-WR, if Arizona's actually dumb enough to do that to him. So if Fitz is gonna stay in the slot, then I won't dismiss Williams' chances of unseating Nelson/Butler/Kirk as a starter in 2/3-wide. But does that actually represent real opportunity? I envision a scenario in which Arizona sans Arians becomes a very low passing yardage offense and that the boundary receivers in 3-wide are only used as vertical decoys to pull safeties out of the box and make David Johnson's life easier. If so, those boundary receivers won't prosper, maybe not even as boom or bust weekly plays, as Bradford has been gun-shy attacking vertically his entire career and Rosen's deep-ball is one of his weakest traits.

[DLF3000]

Liked him last year, but I've soured since. Might still be worth a flier for another year as who knows what to expect from the Cards the next few years.

[notweswelker]

CHAD WILLIAMS HYPE LET'S GOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

[DJB]

Fitzgerald isn't going to be around forever and who knows Kirk could be a bust . Hes a decent stash right now id say.

[notweswelker]

Fitzgerald isn't going to be around forever and who knows Kirk could be a bust . Hes a decent stash right now id say.

It's also possible both the youngesters are good. Actually think that's my impression here.

[cazzie33]

Rough to see a diamond in there

[ericanadian]

So on the plus side, he's led the WRs in snaps in week two and was second on the team in week one. Unfortunately, he's only gotten three targets in each game and has yet to catch one. Has anyone had the fortitude to actually watch the garbage the Cards are calling football? Is this just a product of the line not giving Bradford enough time to go to Williams, who I assume is mostly running the deep routes and Bradford being inaccurate when he goes that direction or is Williams just not getting open and has garbage hands?

[raiders444]

I second this request ^^^

[notweswelker]

So on the plus side, he's led the WRs in snaps in week two and was second on the team in week one. Unfortunately, he's only gotten three targets in each game and has yet to catch one. Has anyone had the fortitude to actually watch the garbage the Cards are calling football? Is this just a product of the line not giving Bradford enough time to go to Williams, who I assume is mostly running the deep routes and Bradford being inaccurate when he goes that direction or is Williams just not getting open and has garbage hands?

I watch most games, including some of the Cards games.
From what I've seen it's a combination of things. The line has been poor, the playcalling has been atrocious and very predictable, and Bradford has been utterly awful. I cannot believe he is starting again this week. I think he's essentially just so skittish and in shell-shock mode, similar to Eli in NY, because they are both under constant pressure and are not mobile qbs.
Even when Bradford had time though, he looked bad. I'd hold off evaluating the skill players at this point. There was I think 2 opportunities for Williams to make a very contested catch on tough balls that he didn't make, but I'm not holding that too hard against him.

[Mascott93]

In a league where I drafted him and subsequently drafted Christian Kirk, I dropped him this week for Higgins. He’s getting a lot of snaps but minimal targets/production.