After being released by the Chargers on March 13, Mike Williams signed a one-year deal with the New York Jets five days later. Williams and the Jets fill each other’s needs quite well. Coming off of a significant injury at a mature age, Williams gets a one-year “prove-it deal” and a chance to rebuild his stock for one more run at a bigger free agent payday in 2025. The Jets get a potentially far better option than Allen Lazard to put opposite Garrett Wilson in their win-now shot with Aaron Rodgers.
WHILE WITH THE CHARGERS, THERE WERE SOME VOLTAGE FLUCTUATIONS
Williams has been an effective WR since entering the league as part of the vaunted 2017 skill-position rookie crop, which included receivers like Cooper Kupp, Chris Godwin, and JuJu Smith-Schuster. He is a very efficient receiver, and he has been on the right side of the ledger in total FPOE in every season except his first when he was still recovering from a broken neck he had sustained in college. He has three seasons with at least 24.6 FPOE and ranks 12th in the NFL in air yards per target among WRs with at least 200 targets since he entered the league in 2017. A big-bodied guy, Williams has the 20th-most receiving TDs in the NFL since 2017 as well. He consistently brushes up near the elites of the position in yards per route run (YPRR), hovering at or around 2.0 every year since 2019. He was off to an electric start in 2023, pacing at 2.7 YPRR, which would have tied for ninth with Puka Nacua and A.J. Brown before a torn ACL in Week 3 sidelined him for the rest of the year.
Williams’ weakness is that he’s never been a remarkable target earner. He topped 100 targets only once, has a career 16% market share, and maxes out at 76 receptions in a given year. As such, his compiling stats have also been lukewarm, hitting 1,000 yards only twice, and he is 30th in the league in WR PPR fantasy points since he came into the league.
