Damien Williams: Can we Trust a Small Sample Size?

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One-Hit Wonder?

2016: Thomas Rawls is a consensus fourth-round draft pick in fantasy leagues despite receiving double-digit carries in only six games for the Seahawks the prior season. He finishes 2017 ranked 57th at running back.

2017: Ty Montgomery’s average draft position soars to Round 3 based largely on three fantasy-relevant performances late in the previous year. He promptly faceplants with an RB55 finish.

2018: Alex Collins routinely goes in the fourth round of drafts after coming out of nowhere to take over as Baltimore’s starter in Week 6 of the 2017 season. Collins, you’ll recall, ended last season as the RB37.

Many consider Damien Williams this year’s leading candidate to go from small-sample superstar to early-round trap. Before totaling 572 yards from scrimmage and eight touchdowns in the Chiefs final five games last year (playoffs included), Williams was a former undrafted free agent with a non-descript four-year NFL career. It took both Kareem Hunt’s shocking release and an injury to second-stringer Spencer Ware before Kansas City’s coaching staff even let him on the field.

But the late-season outburst was enough for Chiefs running back coach Eric Bienemy to name Williams the team’s starter entering 2019, leaving us with a difficult choice. Is Williams worthy of his lofty ADP (late-second round and rising as of this writing), or is he merely the next in a long line of unproven running backs to become a cautionary tale for fantasy gamers?

The evidence points overwhelmingly towards Williams being properly valued at worst, and undervalued at best, for several reasons:

• Williams went undrafted in 2014 due to immaturity concerns, not because he lacked the skills to be an NFL starter.
• His athletic profile coming out of college places him in an impressive cohort
• He’s a dangerous pass-catcher in an offensive scheme noted for producing dangerous pass-catching running backs
• The Chiefs offense can regress substantially in 2019 and still lead the league in touchdowns
• His competition for touches in Kansas City’s backfield is laughable

What Took So Long?

Williams’ road to becoming an NFL starter would have been far less bumpy had he been able to stay out of his own way before turning pro. He originally committed to Arizona State but couldn’t make his grades coming out of high school. Instead of playing for the Sun Devils as a freshman, Williams was forced to go the junior college route.

When he transferred to Oklahoma for his junior year (the coach who recruited him at Arizona State had been fired by that time), the Sooners were coming off a 10-3 season and returning their top-3 rushers. Despite starting at the bottom of the depth chart, it took Williams three games to earn the starting job. He went on to rush for 1,003 yards and 11 touchdowns, adding 34 catches for 320 yards and another score through the air.

Unfortunately, Williams was once again his own worst enemy during his senior season. Multiple failed drug tests got him kicked off the team midway through 2013, tanking his NFL Draft stock. We’ll never know where Williams would have been drafted if not for the suspension, but let’s consider some facts:

• Since 2000, Williams is one of only 22 running backs who weighed at least 220 lbs. to run a 4.45 40-yard dash or better at the scouting combine.
• Eight of these 22 running backs (36%) were first-round picks, including Deuce McCallister, Larry Johnson, Willis McGahee, and Saquon Barkley
• 17 out of 22 (77%) were drafted by the end of Round 4
• Only four (18%) other players in the sample went undrafted

Running backs with Williams’ size/speed profile have been drafted by Day 2 (typically NFL starter territory) more than 75% of the time since the turn of the century, but he never got the chance due to off-field mistakes. Fortunately, we can assume those mistakes are no longer a concern now that Williams is a four-year NFL veteran who earned the respect of his coaches in both Miami and Kansas City.

“A tough, football intelligent, playmaker. He’s just a guy that when Sundays come around, he’s going to give you everything he has. When things are going bad, you get the ball to him and he’ll make something happen. He’s one of the guys I loved being around, whether it be practice or game day. Just seeing him grow over the time that we’ve been together, it was a great experience.” - Former Dolphins Head Coach Adam Gase

“We wanted to sit down and get to know each other because what you see on tape is a tremendous football player. Obviously, Damien has had a few things that have taken place in his past, but I just wanted to make sure that he understood how we do things around here. The culture here is great from the top down. One thing we just wanted to make sure is, ‘Hey, we understand that you’re a great football player, but are you willing to buy into how we do it, our lifestyle and the way we do things in this building?’ That’s the most important thing.” - Bienemy, shortly after the Chiefs signed Williams last season

Do You Like Receptions and Touchdowns?

The list of running backs we can safely project for both double-digit carries and four-to-six catches per game might include just seven names. Six are no-brainer first-round picks Barkley, Christian McCaffrey, Alvin Kamara, Ezekiel Elliott, Melvin Gordon, and David Johnson. The other is Williams, who plays in a more fertile offense than any of them.

Concerns about Williams’ rushing workload are valid if you expect him to replicate Kareem Hunt’s 16.5 attempts per game from 2018. In his five-game run as Kansas City’s starter last season, Williams exceeded 13 carries in a game only once (the Chiefs blowout win over the Colts in the Wildcard Round). But even if he tops out at a modest 10-13 carries for 40-60 rushing yards most weeks, it’s all gravy thanks to his role in the Chiefs passing game.

Williams was targeted at least six times -- and caught at least five passes -- in each of his starts last season (provided we throw out Kansas City’s 35-3 win over the listless Raiders in Week 17). We should expect his success as a receiver to continue this year for three reasons:

1. This is not a new development. Williams has the aforementioned 34-catch season on his college résumé and recorded at least 30 receiving yards in a game seven times during his three-year stint with the Dolphins, despite rarely playing significant snaps.
2. Tyreek Hill’s status for 2019 remains in limbo as of this writing. Per airyards.com, Hill saw 37 targets within five yards of the line of scrimmage last season. If Hill is suspended, gets put on the Commissioner's Exempt List, or remains banned from team activities for a chunk of the season (all likely outcomes at this point), there will be a target void in Kansas City Williams can help fill. And a portion of those targets will be designed to get him the ball in space where his straight-line speed makes him a threat to break big plays.
3. Andy Reid’s scheme consistently churns out running back receiving production. From 2002-2012 with the Eagles, Reid’s backfields totaled the most receiving yards and receiving touchdowns in the NFL. And since taking over as Chiefs head coach in 2013, his running backs have combined to rank fifth in receiving yards and first in receiving touchdowns, respectively. You don’t have to respect Williams’ tiny five-game sample, but you would be foolish to ignore Reid’s irrefutable track record when it comes to running back pass-catching production.

Just be careful not to confuse Williams with a one-dimensional, low-floor PPR specialist. Touchdowns rule in fantasy football regardless of scoring format, and Williams is a dark horse to lead the entire league in total scores. The potential loss of Hill, combined with plain old statistical regression, threatens to reduce the size of the offensive pie in Kansas City this year. But even if we project a drastic 20% dip from last season’s 66 offensive touchdowns, the Chiefs should still finish inside (or close to) the top-5 in total scores per game in 2019.

Williams not only has scoring upside as a receiver (he caught four touchdowns in five starts last season), but he’s given Kansas City no reason to take him out at the goal-line. He converted four touchdowns on seven attempts from inside the opponent’s five-yard line last season. The 57% goal-line conversion rate comes with the same small-sample-size caveat, but his effectiveness in short yardage situations doesn’t appear fluky. Williams averaged a team-leading 4.83 yards per attempt on six third-or-fourth-down carries with three yards or less to go last year. By comparison, Hunt had seven such attempts and averaged 2.14 yards on each.

Zero Legitimate Competition

Assuming Williams only carries the ball 10-13 times per game is probably giving his competition too much credit. Carlos Hyde was added prior to the draft for $1.5 million guaranteed. Theoretically, he’s a strong fit in Reid’s scheme. The Chiefs ran 80% of their plays out of the shotgun last season and Hyde has averaged 4.7 yards per attempt out of the formation during his career.

But Hyde is on his fourth team in the last three seasons -- a career trajectory that puts him closer to washing out of the league than carving out a role in one of the league’s best offenses. Hyde was held to 3.4 yards per attempt in six games with Cleveland last season while his backfield mates, Nick Chubb (28.8!) and Duke Johnson Jr (5.8), were each far more efficient over the same span.

Kansas City’s biggest show of faith in Williams this off-season came when the team ignored running back until the sixth-round of this year’s draft. Darwin Thompson has fans in the scouting community, including our own Matt Waldman, who wrote the Utah State product “offers exciting upside as a playmaker who fits Kansas City’s offense the way Brian Westbrook meshed with Andy Reid's Eagles”.

While Thompson excelled in the vertical and broad jump drills at the combine, and profiles as a potentially dangerous satellite back, there are major hurdles he needs to clear before we begin comparing him to a Hall of Fame nominee like Westbrook:

• At 5’8’’, 198 lbs., Thompson’s 4.6-second forty-yard dash time is a red flag
• He lacks the size and vision to run between the tackles
• Thompson was a JUCO transfer who played in the Mountain West Conference and started only nine games. The defenders he made look silly were far from NFL-caliber.

In a best-case scenario, a standout preseason could earn Thompson a role in the packages that were designed to get Hill in space close to the line of scrimmage. But the Chiefs also added Washington State running back James Williams after the draft as a street free agent. Williams has the same smallish frame and space-back skillset as Thompson, which suggests they’ll be competing for the same role -- situational No. 3 running back behind Williams and Hyde.

Projections

Final Thoughts

Even if you only project him at 10-12 carries per game, Williams’ pass-catching ability and touchdown potential make him a low-end RB1 in PPR leagues. And the upside for a top-5 season exists if the Chiefs commit to him for 20 total touches per game.

Does Williams have an established body of work that makes drafting him in the second round feel comfortable? No. But if sample-size is his only question mark, that makes fewer than the other running backs typically being drafted in the same tier:

At the time of this writing, Williams’ ADP is on the rise, but if you can snag him as your RB2 or pair him with an elite first-round wide receiver, your 2019 draft is off to a fine start.

Other Thoughts From Around the Web

Matt Waldman listed Williams as a player to avoid right here on Footballguys:

“Williams is a straight-linish speedster who doesn't play completely up to his athletic ability. He can handle physical play and he's a skilled passing-down option. However, a healthy Carlos Hyde is a superior talent, and rookie Darwin Thompson offers exciting upside as a playmaker. Thompson has already earned a rep as a playmaker during minicamp. He too could push Williams into a smaller role. Considering that the Chiefs' line isn't as strong as it was, Kansas City could value more creative backs who can turn potential losses into gains. Hyde and Thompson are better at this than Williams.”

Pro Football Focus’ Scott Barrett agrees Williams is a fantasy RB1 with upside:

“Given the production we’ve seen from Williams (in a small sample), from Hunt over the past two seasons, and from nearly all other running backs throughout Reid’s career, it’s clear Williams has sky-high upside. However, even if Williams isn’t a bell-cow running back in 2019, he won’t be as risky as most other committee backs, drawing good target volume on the league’s most efficient passing offense.”

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