How Ryan Williams represents the future of college football, for better or worse

His eyes shaded under a white Georgia visor, his team just minutes removed from a crushing defeat in Tuscaloosa, Georgia head coach Kirby Smart reacted to a question about Tide freshman wide receiver Ryan Williams with a mixture of dread and resignation.

“Great player,” Smart said of Williams, who had just torched the Dawgs for a go-ahead, game-winning touchdown in Saturday night’s instant classic. “I mean, I got asked by the GameDay crew, ‘What are you going to do special about Ryan Williams?’ I said, ‘We can’t do anything special with Ryan Williams. They got a guy back there at quarterback who could be the best running back in the country and he throws the ball.’ So, you can’t put two people on Ryan Williams. You can’t do it.”

Well, you could, but Williams will just make them look silly, as he did on that infamous monstrous go-ahead touchdown catch, where he caught the ball, spun, danced out of reach, then accelerated into the end zone:

Williams caught six passes for 177 yards in Alabama’s 41-34 thriller, including two of the most remarkable catches of the season — that go-ahead touchdown with 2:26 remaining in the game, and a bobbled, snatched-from-the-air 54-yarder:

It’s too early to say Williams — who, as you may have heard once or twice, is still 17 years old — will be a generational player. But he already represents a generational shift in athlete empowerment. Williams is one of the first stars of an era where both the transfer portal and NIL are not just elements of a player’s career, but the bedrock of an entire brand strategy. Williams, born in 2007, has never known a time when he wasn’t in complete control of his own playing destiny.

This is, as you’ve heard so many times in recent years, the Wild West era of college football, a time when all the old rules have been…

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Author : Yahoo Sports

Publish date : 2024-10-03 19:00:27

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