At 18 years young, Ryan Williams became the youngest person to ever grace the cover of EA Sports’ college football video game. That’s right. Williams is no longer 17 years old … in case you haven’t heard. Pour one out for the most popular, overused game note of the 2024 season.
But yeah, Williams sharing the cover with fellow 2nd-year wideout Jeremiah Smith felt like a fitting honor after his sensational true freshman season at Alabama.
Sophomore season loading…Your #CFB26 Cover Stars @Ryanwms1 + @Jermiah_Smith1 Coming July 10. Full Reveal Thursday.?: t.co/Evtg4x97HP pic.twitter.com/AVoMYokJIr
— EASPORTSCollege (@EASPORTSCollege) May 27, 2025Williams will likely continue to draw comparisons to Smith, as well as fellow former 5-star receiver from the state of Alabama, Cam Coleman. We tackled the latter comparison earlier in the offseason. Today’s exercise is simpler in some ways, and more complicated in others.
What are realistic expectations for Williams in 2025?
The short answer has already been laid out. He’s expected to be 1 of the 2 most electric players in the sport. That means becoming an All-American and making a strong case for the Biletnikoff Award, which has been won by 3 Alabama receivers in the Playoff era alone. Setting Biletnikoff-or-bust expectations for Williams doesn’t feel entirely fair at a time when Smith also exists, even though his Year 1 would suggest that whatever his ceiling is would include such an honor.
Just in case you needed a reminder, here’s what Alabama’s 3 Biletnikoff Award seasons looked like:
2014 Amari Cooper: 124 catches, 1,727 receiving yards, 16 receiving touchdowns, Heisman Trophy finalist 2018 Jerry Jeudy: 68 catches, 1,315 receiving yards, 14 receiving touchdowns 2020 DeVonta Smith: 117 catches, 1,856 receiving yards, 23 receiving touchdowns, Heisman Trophy winnerAverage that out and it’s 103 catches for 1,632 yards and 18 touchdowns. The only SEC receiver who ever checked all 3 of those boxes in the same season was 2020 Smith, so even that’s a bit too high of an expectation to set for Williams, who put up solid, but not earth-shattering, numbers as a true freshman.
Let’s not forget that as dazzling as Williams was — the Georgia catch and run was still the most absurd play made by a receiver all season — he wasn’t flawless. After that UGA performance, he had 7 drops compared to 3 touchdown catches, and he failed to hit 90 receiving yards in a game. How much of that was because of quarterback play and how much of that was because putting up ridiculous numbers as a true freshman is still extremely difficult in the SEC? It was probably a bit of both.
Williams finished with 48 catches for 865 yards, which was the most receiving yards by an SEC true freshman wide receiver since Calvin Ridley and Christian Kirk surpassed the 1,000-yard mark in 2015. Along with Coleman, who had 8 touchdown catches, Williams had as many touchdown grabs as an SEC true freshman wide receiver since 2012 Cooper.
SEC greats like Ja’Marr Chase, Justin Jefferson, Malik Nabers and even the aforementioned Smith didn’t have half as much production as true freshmen. They also got progressively better and became virtually unguardable by their pre-draft seasons. We know that Williams isn’t entering that phase yet (I’m not sure if you heard but he just turned 18 years old in February). What we don’t know is how much better he can get.
Improved quarterback play would help. We’ll wait and see how imminent that is. One would think the addition of Ryan Grubb will also help after he called plays for that 2023 Washington group of receivers, which was the best in the sport (Rome Odunze leading FBS in both receiving yards and contested catches is a wild feat). After a frustrating sophomore season in 2013, Cooper took off once Lane Kiffin came on board in 2014. Could the same be true of Williams with Grubb? That’s possible, though it’s worth noting that Kiffin implemented a new offense. That’s not what Grubb will be doing.
Williams already led the SEC with 25 downfield targets (20 yards past the line of scrimmage), so Kalen DeBoer‘s scheme didn’t hold him back there. At the same time, he only had 8 such catches (10th in SEC), and 3 of those 17 incompletions were drops. It’s easy to forget that Arian Smith was the only SEC receiver who finished the season with more drops than Williams (7), who also had a 101.0 QB rating when targeted, which was No. 26 in SEC (min. 30 targets). Most receivers who only catch 55% of their targets (No. 42 in SEC) aren’t being tabbed as faces of the sport.
So why then is it still fair to set sky-high expectations for Williams? Again, you can’t teach that body control both attacking the football and after the catch. It’s also darn impressive to think of where he ranked among SEC receivers in these areas (via PFF):
8 touchdown catches (T-No. 4 in SEC) 8.3 yards after catch per reception (T-No. 4 in SEC) 16 missed tackles forced (T-No. 5 in SEC) 397 yards after catch (No. 6 in SEC) 8 contested catches (T-No. 7 in SEC)Those things all demonstrate a high degree of difficulty that projects well moving forward. How well? Well, let’s go back to who Williams was through the Georgia game. He averaged 4 catches for 116 yards and 28.9 yards per catch in Alabama’s first 4 games. We knew that the last number would eventually come down, and it did. Averaging 18 yards per catch for a full season is nothing to scoff at for anyone, much less for a true freshman who steps into a WR1 role on a Playoff-hopeful SEC team.
Williams got the WR1 treatment from defenses after that Georgia game. That was an adjustment. That adjustment should be made now. If he’s not catching 5 balls per game, something has gone wrong (3 SEC receivers did that last year). That’s gotta be the floor. Six catches per game should be the expectation. A 1,300-yard, 13-touchdown season is a fair projection. That would mean an average of 100 yards and 1 touchdown per game in a 13-game season.
Here are the SEC players who have hit 1,300 receiving yards and 13 receiving touchdowns in the same season:
2023 Malik Nabers 2021 Jameson Williams 2020 DeVonta Smith 2019 Ja’Marr Chase 2019 Justin Jefferson 2018 Jerry Jeudy 2014 Amari Cooper 1998 Craig YeastThere are elite guys from the last 15 years like Mike Evans, Jordan Matthews, Alshon Jeffery and AJ Brown who didn’t even join that exclusive club of 8. Shoot, Jalin Hyatt won the 2022 Biletnikoff Award and even he came up just shy of that with 1,267 yards (he also did that in 12 games as opposed to the 13 games we’re projecting for Williams).
But that does feel like a fair expectation for someone as talented as Williams. Outside of Cooper, he had a better true freshman season than anyone on that list. It doesn’t guarantee that he’ll deliver one of the 10 best seasons we’ve ever seen by an SEC receiver. All it means is that he’s got a head start on the greats that came before him. And no, that’s not just because he burst onto the scene when he was 17.
You know. In case you haven’t heard.
Ryan Williams earned an EA Sports ’26 cover, but what will his play earn him in 2025? Saturday Down South.
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