Pittsburgh Steelers Exit Meeting: WR Mike Williams
Experience: 8 Years (1 with Steelers)
The Steelers’ months-long search for a credible wide receiver ultimately landed them Mike Williams. Considering they didn’t even use him all that much, let alone target him, did they get their money’s worth? Rather, it’s not about the money, but instead the investment.
The Steelers sent the New York Jets a fifth-round pick for Mike Williams and got one touchdown in exchange. He caught nine passes for 132 yards and saw 13 targets. While at times he looked like an effective weapon, for the most part, he seemed pretty anonymous.
The Steelers showed interest in Williams in free agency, intending to bring him in for a visit. Williams visited the Jets first, however, and signed a contract before leaving the building. Granted, the Steelers were never going to give him as much as New York was willing to pay him. But it’s usually not a good sign when a team signs a player and trades him in the same year.
In hindsight, it’s easy to wonder why the Steelers bothered at that point—but also easy to lose the plot. When the Steelers traded for Mike Williams, they were riding pretty high. They were in that anniversary phase with Russell Wilson after he took over the starting job. Give him another proven deep threat, and who knows what that might unlock?
It didn’t hurt that Williams scored the game-winning touchdown in his first game with the Steelers. He wasn’t even supposed to be on the field, but Calvin Austin III got banged up shortly before that. As a result, Williams had to execute Austin’s assignment on the play—and it worked out well.
That was the high point of his Steelers career, though, doing relatively little else after the fact. To a certain extent, that wasn’t Williams’ fault because he simply wasn’t seeing targets. For weeks, the Steelers fielded questions over why they weren’t targeting him more.
By the end of the season, though, nobody was really asking it anymore. I guess most decided that if they still weren’t going to do it, there might be a reason. Now, Mike Williams is no grand prize, but he isn’t completely washed up, either. He is still 30 years old and can run to a certain extent. A full year removed from a major knee injury, he may even look better in 2025. But if the Steelers want to re-sign him, I can’t imagine it will be on anything but a cheap contract. I don’t see anybody else offering him a $10 million deal.
The Pittsburgh Steelers find themselves at home, the inevitable result of another early playoff exit. This is a repeated pattern for the organization, with no clear end in sight. As the Steelers conduct their own exit meetings, we will go down the roster conducting our own. Who should stay, and who should go, and how? Who should expect a bigger role next season, and who might deserve a new contract? We’ll explore those questions and more in these articles, part of an annual series.
