Mailbag: Biggest villain in 2024, Jahmyr Gibbs or Jameson Williams?

With the Detroit Lions comfortably into their summer break, there’s not a lot of information coming out of Allen Park these days, so we recently asked fans to submit questions about the organization. We will be using some of those questions for upcoming podcasts (Detroit Lions Breakdown and Good Morning Pride), but we also wanted to highlight a few in written form as well.

For today’s mailbag, I grabbed an interesting question that I wanted to expand on.

Bear with me for a moment while I set the table...

Chris Spielman, Lions legend and current Special Assistant to President/CEO, joined his brother on a podcast recently and briefly discussed what the Lions' “villain” mentality means. Spielman explained that when the Lions pursue a player in free agency or the draft, they must meet a set of standards that the team is unwilling to compromise on.

Essentially, at a basic level, players they target need a certain level of athletic ability, instincts for their position, a desire to compete, and to “not be an idiot” on or off the field. But the thing that makes a player special—or a villain—in Detroit’s eyes is a player who can be a problem for other teams.

In sports, most everybody wants to be a hero for their team. It’s human nature to want to score the winning touchdown or make a game-clinching interception that wins your team their first division title in 30 years (Hey, Ifeatu Melifonwu). But in Detroit, the Lions also want to be the villain in their opponents' superhero story. The Lions want players on their roster who can cause unanswerable matchup problems for their opponent.

And that brings us back to this mailbag question: who is going to be the biggest villain this season, Jahmyr Gibbs or Jameson Williams?

Both players have incredibly dynamic skill sets and are set for significant roles in 2024. But in order to fully answer this question, we need to compare the pair’s production history and explore how they are expected to produce this season.

Snap counts

Last season Gibbs saw just over 50% of the Lions' offensive snaps, even though he technically only started three games. With running back co-starter David Montgomery returning this season, the Lions figure to stick with what was working last season, and the pair will likely split snaps once again in 2024.

Williams checked in just under 38% of the Lions’ total offensive snaps last season and registered 10 starts in 12 games. It’s worth noting that Williams missed four games due to suspension, and if we look solely at the percentage of snaps in the games he played, it jumps him up to just over 53% of offensive snaps. The absence of Josh Reynolds is expected to create even more opportunity for Williams, which could result in him seeing upwards of 75-80% of offensive snaps in 2024.

Advantage: Williams

Touches

While Williams was on the field slightly more than Gibbs in 2023, the Lions' run-first mentality shows up when we look at the touch distribution. In 2023, Gibbs had 182 carries and 71 targets (52 receptions), while Williams was targeted just 42 times (24 receptions) and ran the ball three times.

If we expect Gibbs to replicate his 2023 numbers and extrapolate Williams’ numbers to match his increase in snaps, Williams would still fall well short of Gibbs in this category.

Advantage: Gibbs

Production

In 2023, Gibbs’ 234 touches resulted in 1261 all-purpose yards (5.39 yards per touch) and 11 touchdowns. Meanwhile, Williams’ 27 touches produced a combined total of 383 yards (14.2 yards per touch) and three touchdowns.

Again, like with touches, Williams is projected to come up well short of matching Gibbs. Even if Williams was able to absorb all of Reynolds’ 2023 production (40 receptions for 608 receiving yards and five touchdowns), he’d still end up behind Gibbs in his statistical production.

Advantage: Gibbs

Yards after contact/catch

Both player's ability to create with the ball in their hands is what makes them so dangerous, so examining their yards after contact and yards after the catch are worth exploring.

Of Williams’ 354 receiving yards, 106 yards came after the catch, while 16 of his 29 rushing yards came after contact. Williams’ speed makes him incredibly dangerous both in getting downfield separation and once the ball is in his hands. That boils down to one-third of all Williams production coming after the catch/contact.

Gibbs’ numbers are even more impressive. Of his 945 rushing yards, 633 have come after contact—he led the NFL in broken tackles on run plays—that’s two-thirds of his production for an average of 3.0 yards after contact per attempt.

But Gibbs’ receiving yards gained after catch are equally unique. Of his 316 total receiving yards, he gained 325 after the catch. So how does he produce more yards after the catch than in total? It comes down to where he catches the ball, as nearly half of his receptions came behind the line of scrimmage. With the Lions reportedly wanting to expand Gibbs’ route tree in 2024, this seems to be an area where he could see a spike in production.

Advantage: Gibbs

Explosive plays

While the statistical volume clearly favors Gibbs, Williams’ ability to create explosive plays arguably keeps him in the conversation for biggest villain.

“For us upstairs, we go a run play of 12-or-more and a pass play of 16-or-more,” Lions offensive coordinator Ben Johnson explained how the Lions judge explosive plays. “And I think different places do it a little bit different, but that’s what we typically stick to.”

In 2023, Williams’ average depth of target (ADOT) was 16.4 yards (16.8 over career), resulting in 14.8 yards per reception (15.8 over career) and 9.3 yards per rush (17.3 over career). That led to an impressive eight explosive plays on just 27 touches, or simply put, an explosive play every 3.4 touches.

Not to be outdone, Gibbs produced an impressive 25 explosive plays in 2023 (and was a yard away from adding to this total on five different occasions) resulting in an explosive play every 9.4 touches.

Advantage: Williams in frequency and Gibbs in consistency

Conclusion

There is no doubt that Williams’ ability to produce big plays at high frequency, combined with an increased role, will make him a player that opposing defenses will have to account for in 2024. Williams possesses rare speed and if opponents aren’t keeping tabs on him, he’s shown that he can make them pay.

That being said, Gibbs’ consistency and ability to instantly gash defenses with big plays, make him a massive problem for defenses on a down-by-down basis. Not only is he a player that teams need to account for but he’s a player that defensive coordinators need to develop an entire game plan around.

So to answer Van’s original question, I’m not only taking Gibbs here but I feel comfortable calling him the biggest villain on the Lions roster.