DETROIT — Amon-Ra St. Brown had 13 yards. Sam LaPorta had 27 yards until the final seconds of the game. These guys were All-Pros last season and the Los Angeles Rams spent themselves against them. It worked.
Didn’t matter.
The Detroit Lions didn’t tackle well. They lost two possessions. They had problems against Matthew Stafford. They didn’t move the ball very well until overtime.
It didn’t matter anyway.
Such are the endless, tantalizing possibilities of a superstar like Jameson Williams. And when he plays like he did on Sunday night – converting six touches into 134 yards and a stunning touchdown – anything is possible for the Detroit Lions. Even a 26-20 overtime win over the mighty Los Angeles Rams on a night when Detroit didn’t play its best in almost every other respect.
This is Jamo.
And on Sunday evening he finally played accordingly.
“I plan to do a lot more,” Williams said. “I don’t plan on this being the best game of my career. I’m just starting to be myself.”
Scary thought, isn’t it?
The Lions had already become an elite team in the NFC, with their offense ranked among the league’s top five over the past two seasons, despite getting very little out of the former 12th pick. He played little as a rookie because of an ACL injury, and caught just one of nine passes when he finally touched the turf because he was so far behind. A year later, he was suspended for the start of the season, putting even more emphasis on his development in training camp – and then he missed most of training camp with injuries to one hamstring and then the other.
But Williams delivered good workouts when he finally returned to the field, got hot down the stretch and then exploded rushing and receiving touchdowns in the NFC Championship Game. That raised expectations for Year 3, and the Lions gave it their all. So much so that they didn’t even bother to swap Josh Reynolds in the lineup.
They gave Williams the No. 2 job, and he rewarded that trust with his best offseason as a pro and then his best game as a pro right out of the gate. He turned a short crosser with his first touch of the season into a 36-yard shot for a touchdown to take the lead. Then he added a point of his own on a play the Lions knew would work.
They saw something on film that made them think Rams cornerback Tre’Davious White would bite hard when Williams faked a ruck and then hit him with the deep route. And that’s exactly what happened. White bit so hard that he had to grab Williams by the waist to slow him down, pulling a flag in the process – and Williams was so strong against him that the speedster still pulled away and scored a 52-yard touchdown.
“That little double play that we’ve been preparing for all week,” quarterback Jared Goff said. “He basically caught them off guard and put the ball in front of him and then he caught it great. He made some great plays all night. He did a great job.”
No joke. Williams became the first receiver in franchise history to record at least 121 receiving yards and 13 rushing yards in a game and was awarded a game ball for his efforts. The first game ball of his career at any level, if you can believe it. He took that game ball to his postgame press conference – also a first in his NFL career – and said he might actually sleep with the thing that night.
“This means a lot to me, you know?” Williams said. “I’ve put in a lot of work, not just this year. Since I’ve been in the league, I’ve been working nonstop, and now it’s time to show it. It’s the first game, but it’s just the beginning. We have 16 more in the regular season, in the playoffs, we have a lot more to play. It’s just the beginning.”
That’s the way things are in this city right now. The Lions are Super Bowl contenders and no one is shying away from those expectations. Not even Calvin Johnson, who appeared in a pregame video and uttered those words – “Super” and “Bowl” – which was perhaps a first in the history of Ford Field.
In this league, a win is always good, and when you don’t do well, it’s usually a good sign that more wins are to come. To win on a night like this against one of the best teams in the league, well. This was just one of many wins this season. And the emergence of a guy like Williams is one of the most promising signs that a Super Bowl is well within reach.
That offense will continue to flow through St. Brown, and LaPorta is too good not to get his chance soon. The running game will also get on track, as it did during a grueling overtime effort. But there’s little doubt the Lions would have reached overtime if Jamo hadn’t finally become Jamo and kept the offense going when almost everything else was shut down.
As Jamo says, that was just one game. But when we see Jamo like that this season, even a good team becomes scary as hell.
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