Detroit Lions drama with Jameson Williams is no reason to panic

Once again we have controversy surrounding a young, incredibly talented receiver.

This seems all too familiar to me.

Right now it’s Jameson Williams Detroit Lions wide receiver who is in the middle two-game suspension for violating the NFL’s performance-enhancing substance policy. And facing potential gun charges.

Years ago, it was Randy Moss who came into the NFL with all his baggage.

And I think it’s important, not to mention enlightening, to look back at Moss to get some insight into Williams.

Let me explain.

Back in 1998, I was working for the St. Paul Pioneer Press as a beat writer for the Minnesota Vikings, and the Vikings selected Moss with the 21st overall pick after he fell off the draft board due to several issues. outside the field.

Yes, even Lions missed him – they took Terry Fair one pick ahead of Moss.

So, my bosses sent me to Moss’s hometown of Rand, West Virginia, to do a profile. I talked to his friends, his family, investigated all the allegations against him, and was on the same plane with him when he flew to Minneapolis for his first training session.

I was left with one clear impression: Moss was a child.

He may have been a quirky athlete, but he was a kid who was neither emotionally nor mentally prepared for the NFL – something he has since admitted.

“When I came into the NFL, I had no sense of direction,” Moss said in his 2018 Pro Football Hall of Fame induction speech.

But the Vikings helped him grow up, surrounding him with support. Of course, everything worked out well for Moss, although there were “ups and downs, bumpy roads” along the way.

And I think that’s a lesson for Williams.

“Look, we all know Jamo is a talent,” Lions defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn said Thursday. “He’s talented and I want to see him benefit from everything he can because of the talent he has and because of who he is. If you don’t really know him, you should get to know him because he really is a very good person.”

Let me expand on this point: Williams is a really good person, if you will, who has made some stupid mistakes.

Finding a Perspective on Williams’ “Sins”

In high school, Moss got into a fight and lost his scholarship to Notre Dame. He then signed with Florida State before testing positive for marijuana. So he went to Marshall, then a Division I-AA school, where he excelled for two seasons. Then things went downhill again when Moss got into an argument with his girlfriend.

I remember interviewing her when she was pregnant with Moss’s baby.

Yes, there are moments in a career that seem surreal, and this was one of them.

So let’s recap: Moss got into a fight, was caught doing drugs, and faced domestic violence charges that were eventually dropped.

How does this compare to Williams?

I don’t want to minimize what Williams did because his poor decisions hurt the Lions, but it’s important to put it all in perspective.

Williams’ “sins” – as coach Dan Campbell called them – are minor compared to the controversies Moss faced even before he received in the NFL.

Williams was suspended for gambling in non-NFL games at the Lions’ practice facility. Of course, gambling is legal in Michigan. If he was playing across the street, as far as I’m concerned, he’d be fine.

Yes, he should have known.

Yes, it hurt the team.

But this looks more like a stupid mistake than a massive violation.

Another?

He was suspended for violating the NFL’s PES policy. He was pulled for two games, the lowest penalty.

Yes, this is another stupid mistake.

While no one has said what exactly he took (and Williams denies he took anything “in an attempt to defraud or gain an unfair advantage”), this is another case of poor judgment.

This is the case when you don’t pay attention to the “P” and “B” – to all the details that really matter.

Again, I’m not making excuses for him, I’m just trying to put things into perspective.

Now it seems that the story of “Jamo’s sins” has become a huge snowball, rolling downwards, picking up speed and causing controversy at the same time – all sorts of headlines appearing about Williams being stopped by the police and that he had a gun hidden in his car. without permission.

And you might ask: What the hell is he doing in Detroit with a gun after midnight? What good can come of this?

And these are fair questions.

Again, dumber decision making.

But then consider some perspective: Williams grew up in East St. Louis, Illinois, a notoriously violent area of the country. In 2019, the Belleville (Ill.) News-Democrat reported that “the odds of being murdered in East St. Louis are 19 times higher than the national average.”

For children growing up in such an environment, guns are a way of life.

A few years ago, I spent several months writing a series of articles about the Detroit murders. I interacted with homicide detectives in Detroit, drove their cars to crime scenes, and observed interrogations. Shots were heard every night in Detroit. Every night people were shot. And every night I sat in the homicide department with the detectives and waited, as they said, “for people to die.”

Weapons were everywhere.

At one point I told a story about a family who was looking for a supposedly dead relative. I followed them to the place where they thought the body was buried, and everyone pulled out their guns, including the old grandmother. She just pulled a gun out of her purse.

If you grew up in the inner city, guns are a way of life.

So I’m not too shocked that Williams has a gun (which was reportedly registered).

“Don’t put yourself in situations like that,” Campbell said. “He’s going to learn from it, grow from it. We talked about it and I still think this player has grown a lot. It all comes back to decision making.”

It all comes down to knowing the rules and paying attention.

Be an adult.

“It definitely doesn’t look good, I know,” Campbell said. “But at the same time, all of this happened here at once, and it’s really decision making for him.”

Here’s another important point to consider. All these guys come from different walks of life. Different points of view. Different parents. And they rose to different levels of the maturity totem pole.

One football player in his 20s is different from another.

Some quirky athletes come into the NFL as kids and still have a lot of growing up to do.

According to Lions coaches and players, Williams is a fantastic teammate and has grown since then.

Obviously not completely.

But he has grown, apparently.

Will he be able to learn from these mistakes?

We don’t know yet.

Randy Moss? Yes.

When Moss was a rookie, he was mentored by Chris Carter, a professional player.

When Williams was a rookie, his mentor was Marvin Jones Jr. “He’s a big brother to me,” Williams told me last year.

But Jones is no longer there.

You can criticize the Lions for how they handled Williams, but that’s bullshit because you really don’t know what they did behind closed doors.

Think about it this way: Think about being a parent: Just because a child started doing something doesn’t mean the parents didn’t try again and again to correct the behavior.

Now back to football, you might wonder if they should renew his contract, but that doesn’t matter right now.

All we know are the facts: He’ll go against Green Bay and it will hurt this team.

What if this behavior continues? There is no point in playing hypotheses. Again, it doesn’t matter now. Let’s just take a deep breath and focus on the facts right now.

“Look, I judge people by what’s in their heart, and I know what this guy is made of and he’s worth hanging out with,” Campbell said. “So he’s going to learn from it, he’s going to grow, he’s going to get better at all of this.”

I think it would be crazy to give it up right now. It would be crazy to think that this is the end of the story.

Moss had much worse baggage even before he got to the NFL.

Do you know where he ended up?

Hall of Fame.

Contact Jeff Seidel: [email protected]. Follow him on X @seideljeff. To read his latest columns, follow the link freep.com/sports/jeff-seidel