Part of the reason WR Mike Williams is with the Steelers is because Aaron Rodgers lost trust in him, and Russell Wilson is not the type of quarterback who requires such a repetitively evidence-based trust. The veteran wide receiver seemed to hint at that yesterday in an Instagram post that subtly referenced public criticism from Rodgers on a play that resulted in an interception.
While Williams took responsibility for the mistake, running an in-breaking route when Rodgers expected him to stay vertical, that was sort of the beginning of the end of their working relationship. They New York Jets promptly traded for Davante Adams, and now Williams is building trust with Russell Wilson. He talked about that after the Steelers’ Sunday win with Mike Florio.
“I kind of tried to gain that trust throughout practice this week, just any ball that came my way”, Williams told Florio of his game-winning catch from Russell Wilson. “Just tried to make a play just for him to know that if he throws me the ball he can rely on me to come down with it so that was the main thing for me was just to kind of build that trust”.
What this ultimately boils down to is two different mindsets at the quarterback position. Aaron Rodgers is of the mind that every target has to earn his trust repeatedly. Russell Wilson implicitly trusts his receivers the way former Steelers QB Ben Roethlisberger did. Rather than shy away from him, he will go back to a receiver after a mistake to show that trust.
In this case, Mike Williams hasn’t even had a chance to make a mistake yet with Russell Wilson and the Steelers. He only played nine snaps against the Washington Commanders and drew one target, which was a 32-yard game-winning touchdown. And Williams was only on the field running that route he hadn’t practiced because Calvin Austin III had left the game.
It’s worth noting that Mike Williams missed basically the entire offseason while recovering from a torn ACL. That is when you build critical trust with your quarterbacks on the practice field, and he didn’t have that with Rodgers. Of course, he has only had a few practices with Russell Wilson at this point, but an in-season trade will truncate the timeline.
After Williams’ touchdown, Steelers HC Mike Tomlin welcomed him to Pittsburgh. Scoring a game-winning touchdown will naturally ingratiate you to your teammates, especially your quarterback. But how many snaps will Williams and Wilson play together. Williams is still new to the team and working on picking up the offense.
I have seen a variety of opinions about how the Steelers intend to use Mike Williams. They gave up a fifth-round pick to get him, but will they use him as a No. 2 WR? Many believe that they will simply mix and match receivers after George Pickens. They still like Austin and Van Jefferson. But even if he trusts all of his receivers, who does Russell Wilson like most? He has thrown a touchdown to all of them now.
