Mike Williams played just nine snaps in his Pittsburgh Steelers debut, but that’s all he needed to make a difference. With the Steelers facing 3rd and long, they sent him down the red line, and Russell Wilson hit him in the end zone. While he didn’t face an extraordinary degree of difficulty, he made the appropriate adjustment and scored the game-winning touchdown.
Appearing on the DVE Morning Show Tuesday, former Steelers QB Charlie Batch praised Williams’ performance amid tumultuous circumstances. The Steelers had just acquired Mike Williams from the New York Jets ahead of the trade deadline. As we saw around the NFL in the past two weeks, even big names aren’t guaranteed to make an immediate impact.
“It’s difficult because [Mike Williams] didn’t know how much he was going to play during the game. If you just watched him during the course of practice last week, it was a crash course”, Batch said of the receiver’s first several days with the Steelers.
“He’s trying to figure things out, he knows where to line up, and then Russell [Wilson] does an adjustment at the line of scrimmage and he’s like, ‘What was that audible’?’ It just was a split-second slow during the course of the week, which is expected. But then when you get into the game, here he is at the biggest moment having to line up one-on-one on the outside”.
Williams had only played eight snaps up to that point. He only played on that particular snap because Calvin Austin III took a big hit a couple plays earlier. He even said he hadn’t run that route before with the Steelers—he watched Austin do it. But Russell Wilson offered him another quick crash course on the play before the snap and let it rip.
“Russell didn’t hesitate to give him a chance down the field, and that’s why they brought him in here, to make those plays”, Batch said of Williams. “And when he makes those plays, everybody pays attention to it. It’s going to free up other guys, mainly George Pickens, in one-on-one situations”.
The Steelers gave up a fifth-round pick for Mike Williams, an eighth-year veteran. Known for his deep-ball and contested catches, he offers the offense a dimension it lacked as a complement to George Pickens. While he only played nine snaps last week, Mike Tomlin said he expects Williams’ workload to ramp up.
How that ultimately looks when they get everything fleshed out, we’ll have to see. Williams is still jumping on a moving train here and we are well past the station. The Steelers already have nine games in their holster and eight left to go. We’re in mid-November, and he is just learning their offense now.
But it’s not like Van Jefferson, Scotty Miller, Ben Skowronek, or even Austin are huge threats. Austin has made some nice plays, particularly vertically, but we also see the limitations his size mandates from time to time.
The Steelers can have no such concerns about the 6-4 Mike Williams, who has feasted on situations that emphasize his size. On this particular play, it was more about beating his man one-on-one, which he expertly did. But the Steelers know the moments will come when they need exactly his skill set, and now they’ll have him. Whether he makes the plays will determine whether they spent that fifth-round pick wisely.
