‘Aaron Rodgers is going to have a damn field day’: Mike Williams’ former QBs on the Jets new receiver

The ball snapped and Clemson’s offensive line stood still. Quarterback Cole Stoudt yelled “Go!” but nobody up front moved, as if they were frozen. Except for the center, who snapped the ball right at Stoudt’s legs.

“If it was a couple inches off,” Stoudt said. “I would’ve been… crippled a bit.”

Georgia State’s defensive line (flagged for being offsides) went after him anyway. There was, literally, no protection. So Stoudt made a business decision: He threw a prayer toward the sideline. He knew (or hoped) if he could just get it in Mike Williams’ general vicinity, he’d probably catch it.

As Stoudt was enveloped by the defensive line and brought to the ground, one of them chuckled and said to him: “I swear to God, if that was completed…”

“I’m like: Hate to break it to you, guys,” Stoudt said, laughing.

Williams caught it, 15 yards down the sideline, over a defender.

And so is life for a quarterback when he has Williams as one of his wide receivers. It’s always been that way.

“You hear often in the league about 50/50 balls,” said Jets quarterback Tyrod Taylor, who played with Williams when both were on the Chargers. “We looked at it with him as 80/20 because he came down with most of them.”

For a quarterback, there’s something freeing about playing with Williams; the risk for throwing an interception is so much lower because of the way he plays, so why not just toss it in his direction and see what happens? Since the Chargers selected him in the first round of the 2017 draft, he’s been one of the NFL’s best on those 50/50 balls, making plays down the field and especially in the red zone, where the throwing windows are tighter and everything “happens a lot faster,” said Chase Daniel, who played with Williams for the Chargers too.

Nick Schuessler spent four years at Clemson with Williams — he also emphasized that, with Williams, there’s “no such thing as 50/50 balls.”

“If Mike has a one-on-one (matchup), we need to find a way to put the ball within 10 yards of him and let him do what he’s gifted at,” Schuessler said. “That proved to be the most fruitful thing we did as an offense — if they’re going to isolate Mike on some poor corner, we need to find a way to get him the ball.”

That’s what the Jets signed Williams to do — dominate his one-on-one matchups, win the 50/50 balls, help create scoring opportunities in the red zone and make life easier for Aaron Rodgers and the Jets’ No. 1 receiver, Garrett Wilson. Williams is coming off a torn ACL — which is why the Jets were able to sign him to an incentive-laden one-year deal worth up to $15 million — and didn’t participate in team drills during training camp. But he returned last week and is expected to play in Week 1. The hope is that the Jets are getting the same Williams who flew under the radar in Los Angeles over the last seven seasons despite production that deserved more attention.

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Over the last three seasons — he only played in three games in 2023, and missed four in 2022 — Williams caught 34 of 74 tight window throws, according to TruMedia. His catch percentage (45.9 percent) on the plays ranked second only to Steelers wideout George Pickens (52.7 percent) among wide receivers with at least 30 tight-window targets during that stretch. He also ranked second in EPA (expected points added) per target over those three seasons, and 18th in yards per route run.

During his breakout 2021 season (76 catches, 1,146 yards, nine touchdowns), Williams finished with 21 catches in traffic, second only to Commanders receiver Terry McLaurin. There was also only one interception thrown on which he was the intended receiver, a total of 122 targets, making him one of only three receivers with 100-plus targets and one or fewer interceptions thrown to his coverage area.

“Mike’s been so consistent that I think people in the NFL, the players know damn sure who he is — but the national perception of him, I don’t think people really know who Mike is,” said Tajh Boyd, who played with a freshman Williams during his final season at Clemson.

His quarterbacks know him. Williams has played with stars like Deshaun Watson (Clemson), Philip Rivers (Chargers) and Justin Herbert (Chargers). He’ll add Aaron Rodgers to the list on Monday night when the Jets open against the San Francisco 49ers.

Playing with that level of quarterback “makes my job a lot easier,” Williams said. “It also makes their jobs easier to have a guy like me out there.”

The quarterbacks agree. Here’s the perspective from five of the quarterbacks he played with at Clemson and in the NFL.

Aaron Rodgers could become very familiar with Mike Williams this season. (Katelyn Mulcahy/Getty Images)

“If I throw it up, at least I know it’s not going to be an interception. And then there’s a very high chance he’s going to come down with it. I remember watching him his rookie year and thinking: I don’t think Philip (Rivers) has spent a lot of time with Mike because if he did, anytime he crossed the 20 or 15 that ball should be going to Mike. He’s one of the premier high-point specialists in the NFL.”

The quarterback: Tajh Boyd.

Time together: 2013, at Clemson

In 2012, Boyd was the ACC Player of the Year, a dominant season during which he was surrounded by an elite group of wide receivers, four of whom went on to thrive for periods of time in the NFL: DeAndre Hopkins, Sammy Watkins, Martavis Bryant and Adam Humphries. Hopkins wasn’t huge (6-foot-1) but played bigger than his size, so he was Boyd’s favorite target in the red zone. When Hopkins left for the NFL, Boyd didn’t know who would fill that void — and he didn’t know much about the highly-recruited Williams. Though he did believe, since Williams didn’t enroll early, he wouldn’t factor into the offensive plans much as a freshman.

That opinion changed quickly.

“Mike was such a smooth cat that it was like, man, he’s going to have a chance,” Boyd said. “The first thing you notice is just that he jumps out of the gym, he was eager, he wanted to learn.”

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Williams, Boyd said, was a fast learner — glued to veteran receivers like Watkins and Bryant — and that helped him to get on the field right away as a freshman for a team with national championship aspirations. Boyd threw three touchdowns to Williams that year, and he remembers the one in the second quarter against Georgia Tech, which put Clemson up 20-0 in an eventual 55-31 win. At that point, Boyd said he felt like he still was looking for someone to take on Hopkins’ old role as “the one guy I can say: Hey, if I cross the 15, I’m just going to throw it up.”

Watkins was a star, but that wasn’t his style. The Tigers got to the four-yard line on that drive in the second quarter. Boyd turned to Williams in the huddle and said: Mike, inside zone, I don’t care whether it’s one-on-one or not, I’m going to throw it up and you’re going to catch it, right?

“He doesn’t say anything,” said Boyd, who was drafted in the sixth round by the Jets in 2014. “He just shakes his head, nodding excitedly. Sure enough, the guy’s playing press, Mike backs the dude down like he’s in the paint and just high-points it. Then you’re like, s—, that’s special.”

“He would make you look good because you could put it back shoulder, you could throw it up, you could lead him, he had enough speed — he had another gear. I think it was just early on, you knew this guy is different. There’s a lot of margin for error playing with a receiver like that … If we can just get it near him, he’s going to come down with it or it’s going to be an incompletion. You don’t need to worry about interceptions or anything like that. It’s just, most of the time, he’s coming down with it and he’s going to make you look good. QB might get a lot of love. Like, Wow he completed that. But no, absolutely not. It was probably a horrible ball and Mike just did what Mike does best — rights a wrong.”

The quarterback: Nick Schuessler

Time together: 2013-16, at Clemson

Schuessler didn’t play much at Clemson — 66 pass attempts in four years — but he had a front row seat for Williams’ acrobatics, the receiver’s ability to go up and catch passes he had no business catching. “Even as a freshman I can remember watching him do jump balls,” Schuessler said. “In practice we would do one-on-ones and it was just like: His vertical was so high most of the time he played two and three feet above every corner … there was no such thing as throwing a bad ball to Mike Williams.”

The memory of Williams that has stuck with him all these years, though, is how Williams handled himself after a career-threatening neck injury. As a junior in 2015, Williams went up for a catch in the back of the end zone during an early-season game against Wofford and crashed into the field goal post. He fractured his neck and missed the rest of that season.

Schuessler was impressed with how Williams stuck around with his teammates and supported them that season, which ended with a loss in the National Championship Game against Alabama. Williams still hung out around the team, wearing a neck brace.

“You can imagine how stupid and goofy you look as a college kid walking around campus or going out with your buddies and walking around with this big, thick neck brace on,” Schuessler said. “But that was just Mike. He was a great teammate. It didn’t stop him from showing up and loving on people and being fun and being goofy and laughing and cutting up. That was one of my favorite things because somebody like that, who obviously has his sights set on the NFL — with an injury as serious as that — the natural inclination would be to be more reclusive or be more woe-is-me. And I just don’t remember him ever being that way. He just never changed who he was.”

That’s also what makes Boyd confident that Williams will return from his ACL injury. “The thing about Mike is he’s never going to back down. He’s never going to retreat. Forever that’s been the Jets M.O. — or it should be — and that’s how he is.”

“You’ve got some guys where you’ve really gotta put it on their chest, but if you throw it within five yards of Mike, he’s going to find a way to work his way to that ball. It gives the quarterback a ton of confidence, it keeps the quarterback relaxed and confident in his throw to give him a good ball — or really just give him a chance. That’s all you gotta do, just give him a chance and the majority of the time he’s coming down with it. It doesn’t happen very often where a DB wins over Mike.”

The quarterback: Cole Stoudt

Time together: 2013-14, at Clemson

Stoudt was the backup to Boyd in 2013 — they both work together now on the Clemson staff — and opened the season as the starter in 2014 before ceding the starting role to Deshaun Watson. Williams didn’t start really taking off until Watson took over, but he and Stoudt still connected for two touchdowns during their time together. The first came against Georgia State late in the season. Stoudt remembers it well:

“I threw him a little bang-eight (route) against Georgia State. We had the ball at the 10, it was a red zone play. I throw it right over the linebacker and he caught it, small window,” Stoudt said. “I don’t even know how he caught it. It was a great blur drill, it’d be a great tape for blur drill. He’s got real good little eyes, that’s what we say: You gotta look at that ball with little eyes.”

Against Oklahoma in the Russell Athletic Bowl, Stoudt “threw him a little five yard out and he did the rest for me” on a 26-yard touchdown. Williams had nine catches for 112 yards and a touchdown in that game.

“Just from the moment he got here, he could jump out of the gym, could high-point over anybody and just had really good body control,” Stoudt said. “That’s what you want from a receiver. That’s what you want as a quarterback. The quarterback is not going to be perfect every single time but Mike made you right a lot.”

“You have that security blanket where Mike’s over there somewhere, just put it over there somewhere. Not many guys you can say that about. At the NFL level you’re playing against some of the best guys in the world. He’s got an ability to track the deep ball, his hands are extremely strong and big. Then his jumping ability is out of the roof. Those 50/50 balls — I don’t know if it’s as high as 80/20 but it’s definitely in his favor.”

The quarterback: Cardale Jones

Time together: 2017-19, with the Chargers

Jones was traded to the Chargers in 2017 — Williams’ rookie year — and stuck around Los Angeles on the practice squad for the 2018 season and for training camp in 2019. He and Williams spent a lot of time together. Jones said they would hang out in Newport, Calif., explore Los Angeles and hang out after practice to play video games (particularly “Call of Duty” and “NBA 2K”). Jones knew how talented Williams was right away, but it was his work ethic that jumped out. He’d stay long after practice on the JUGs machine, or he’d ask Jones to stick around to get some extra throws in. He followed star receiver Keenan Allen around (“attached at the hip,” Jones said) and paid close attention when Rivers or Antonio Gates spoke to him.

“I think what stood out to everybody to say that ‘this guy’s got it’ was his attention to detail and his ability to take something from the classroom and apply it to the field immediately,” Jones said. “There were (receivers) coming in at the same time that were leaning on Mike” for advice.

Jones called it appointment viewing watching Allen and Williams in practice. It was as if the two had bet each other, Jones said, about who could make more acrobatic catches in one-on-one or seven-on-seven situations.

“These guys were walking highlight reels,” Jones said. “It transitioned to Sundays for those guys. It still shocks you when you see it.”

“Most of the game now is played outside the pocket with plays that are broken. Your first and second read isn’t there, can your quarterback get outside the pocket and find a completion. There’s been multiple times where Justin (Herbert) is like: Hey Mike’s down there somewhere, let me throw it up. And it’s worked. It’s definitely something that quarterbacks rely on in the back of their head where they’re thinking, If I’m scrambling and I don’t see anything right away, let’s try to find Mike.”

The quarterback: Chase Daniel

Time together: 2021-22, with the Chargers

Herbert used to walk into the Chargers’ quarterback room or offensive meeting and start things off with a simple directive: We need to get Mike more involved. Together, Herbert and Williams both had their best year in 2021, when the quarterback finished with over 5,000 passing yards and 38 touchdowns.

“Justin would be like, ‘We need to get Mike more involved in game plans. We need to find ways to move him around, not just outside,’” Daniel said. “He’s better than people think in the slot. It was cool for me (as the backup quarterback) to see because if a quarterback is talking to a head coach or the offensive coordinator and saying, ‘We need to get this guy more involved,’ then he obviously likes him. He obviously feels comfortable throwing to him because there’s not a lot of times where you throw to Mike and think: ‘Oh, the ball is going to get intercepted.’ … He really is just one of those guys that quarterbacks gravitate to.”

The numbers back it up: Herbert was at his best when Williams was on the field. Over the last three seasons (in which Williams missed 19 games due to injuries):

• With Williams on the field: Herbert had a 68.2 completion percentage (on 1,055 attempts), 3.1 TD-to-interception (which would rank third among all quarterbacks during this stretch), 0.16 EPA per pass dropback (would be third) and 7.4 yards per attempt.

• Without Williams: 64.4 percent completions (on 772 attempts), 2.1 touchdown-to-interception ratio (would be 17th), 0.02 EPA per dropback (would be 22nd), 6.5 yards per attempt. The Chargers went 6-13 in games Williams missed.

Daniel would marvel at Williams’ competitive fire. Everyone calls him quiet, but an “alter ego” comes out on game day, Daniel said, which is something he especially noticed in games against the Kansas City Chiefs. The thing Daniel remembers most from his two years as teammates with Williams: his dominance against the Chiefs. In 2021, Williams had 171 yards and two touchdowns in two games against Kansas City. In 2022, 128 yards and a touchdown.

“He plays his best games against the best opponents, which is what you want,” Daniel said. “You want your level of competitiveness, you want your level of drive, of focus, to go up when you play your best opponents. That’s exactly what he did.”

Rodgers is up next.

Taylor, the Jets’ No. 2 quarterback, knows what he’s in for.

“I can’t wait to get (Williams) healthy,” Taylor said. “I know what he’s he’s capable of, I know he’s eager to show what he can do here.”

Even at 40, Rodgers remains one of the NFL’s best quarterbacks when it comes to fitting throws into tight windows — and with Williams, he’ll have a little extra margin for error. Having Wilson on the opposite side of the field won’t hurt either. Williams’ old quarterbacks say they can’t wait to see what he does with his new one.

“I think Aaron Rodgers is gonna have a damn field day with Mike,” Boyd said.

(Top photo: Jayne Kamin / Oncea / Imagn Images)