TCU standout receiver Savion Williams primed for a breakout season
There are few college football players in the country more gifted than TCU wide receiver Savion Williams.
If you were creating a receiver in the lab, Williams would be the ideal result. Size, physicality and explosiveness. Williams has it all, but having elite traits doesn’t make you an elite receiver. Williams led TCU last season with 573 receiving yards, but it took him until the latter half of the season to really begin asserting himself as the Horned Frogs’ No. 1 receiver.
He has shown flashes of that potential over the last two seasons, but the challenge for Williams at the beginning of training camp was to turn those flashes into consistency, and Williams answered the call from Sonny Dykes.
“He showed me consistency, which hasn’t always been there in the past,” Dykes said. “I think everybody understands you have a uniquely talented guy just from size and ability to make plays and strength and speed. He did at times, but the great ones do it every day.”
Williams was the best player almost every day during training camp, a much different story than last year’s camp where he was a light participant at times as the staff was trying to get him through the grind of camp healthy.
The decision to push Williams worked wonders as he produced highlight play after highlight play. This is exactly what he envisioned when he made up his mind to return to Fort Worth instead of entering the NFL draft or the transfer portal after the season.
“After the Texas Tech game was when I made my decision of whether I was going to come back or not,” Williams said. “I just know I needed another year. I felt like last year at the beginning of the season, I wasn’t getting as many targets as I needed, so I felt like me coming back would’ve been better.”
Before Josh Hoover took over the quarterback job at Iowa State, Williams didn’t have a single game with more than 60 yards receiving. When Hoover took over, he had three, including a breakout game against Texas when he caught 11 passes for 164 yards, including a 14-yard touchdown reception.
“He came up to me and told me after this (Iowa State), the ball is coming your way,” Williams said. “Ever since then me and Josh have just clicked.”
Hoover understands that receivers as talented as Williams need the ball in their hands to feel engaged and like they’re helping the team. It’s one of the few positions that is completely dependent on another.
Even a running back can gain yards with a bad offensive line, but with no targets, it doesn’t matter how talented a receiver is without those opportunities.
“I just believe in Savion so much,” Hoover said. “He’s a guy that feeds off getting targeted, the more you target him the better he gets. I just knew for us to be successful I had to get the ball in No. 3’s hands. If 3 has the ball in his hands good things happen.”
Great things happened when the ball came Williams’ way in camp, like when he took a jet sweep over 50 yards for a score or made one of his signature one-handed catches during a goal line session. The belief of his teammates and coaches have provided him ample motivation, but it’s really his family that has helped a more mature Williams step up.
“I love my marriage, I love my wife and my baby,” Williams said. “It adds a lot of motivation, if you ask me that’s my number one why. When I come out here to get better and work, it’s for them. Everything I do is for them, I try to stay healthy and do everything the right way just for them.”
He’s practicing harder than he’s ever been and assuming the role of as TCU’s go-to receiver. This Williams could be a scary sight for Big 12 defenses.
