{"id":16093,"date":"2017-03-15T13:46:17","date_gmt":"2017-03-15T17:46:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonprofootball.com\/?p=16093"},"modified":"2017-03-15T13:46:17","modified_gmt":"2017-03-15T17:46:17","slug":"making-case-deangelo-williams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/2017\/03\/15\/making-case-deangelo-williams\/","title":{"rendered":"Making the Case For and Against DeAngelo Williams"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Pittsburgh Steelers <\/strong>backup running back, <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.pro-football-reference.com\/players\/W\/WillDe02.htm?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">DeAngelo Williams<\/a><\/strong>, isn\u2019t getting any younger.\u00a0 At age 33, he\u2019s likely nearing the end of his professional football career.\u00a0 Since joining the Steelers in 2015, Williams has carried the ball 298 times for 1,250 yards and 15 touchdowns.\u00a0 Williams gained 1,062 yards in his last two seasons with the <strong>Carolina Panthers<\/strong> and only scored three touchdowns.\u00a0 Williams filled in nicely for star running back <strong>Le\u2019Veon Bell <\/strong>during his suspension last season, but did he do enough to secure a spot on the Steelers roster?<\/p>\n<h2>Making the Case For and Against DeAngelo Williams<\/h2>\n<p>Williams has been a solid backup to Bell over the past two seasons, especially early in the season last year when Williams looked like his younger self.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Et4JedjfbIY\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Williams is a hardened veteran with good pass-blocking skills and good receiving ability as well.\u00a0 Running backs that can carry the ball, catch the ball and pass-block are rare in the NFL these days.\u00a0 Williams and Bell have a close relationship and even take a calm <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pennlive.com\/steelers\/index.ssf\/2017\/01\/steelers_leveon_deangelo.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">walk together<\/a> before each game.\u00a0 Williams can carry a heavy workload like he did when Bell was absent due to injury or suspension, but perhaps even more importantly, he\u2019s also capable of staying on the sideline and remaining humble.\u00a0 Egos have been the downfall of many players over the years, especially those nearing the end of their careers, so it\u2019s nice to see that Williams has no problem taking a back seat to Bell.<\/p>\n<h3>Age and Cost<\/h3>\n<p>As earlier mentioned, Williams is getting old.\u00a0 At age 33, some might say he\u2019s not getting old, he\u2019s already there.\u00a0 With experience comes wear and tear, and Williams has become more and more injury prone over the years.\u00a0 Williams missed seven games due to injury last year, forcing Bell to carry a much heavier workload than expected.\u00a0 Williams signed a two-year deal with the Steelers in 2015 worth $4 million.\u00a0 The argument could be made that $4 million over two years isn\u2019t that much money for a dependable backup, but is it too much when the backup doesn\u2019t play that much?\u00a0 Williams missed nearly half of the season due to injury last year, but when he was healthy and Bell was playing, Williams hardly saw any playing time.<\/p>\n<h3>Depth<\/h3>\n<p>After Williams, the Steelers have <strong>Fitzgerald Touissant<\/strong>.\u00a0 Touissant saw some limited action last year, carrying the ball 14 times for 58 yards.\u00a0 Touissant is set to make $690,000 in 2017 before becoming a restricted free agent in 2018.\u00a0 The Steelers could decide to re-sign Williams to another two-year deal, so that he and Touissant\u2019s contracts would both be up at the same time.\u00a0 The Steelers should consider drafting a running back in this year\u2019s draft.\u00a0 With Williams getting to the end of his career and Touissant not really performing all that much, it\u2019s important to find a solid backup to Bell in the unfortunate case of injury.<\/p>\n<h3>Conclusion<\/h3>\n<p>Finding a dependable backup that isn\u2019t upset with being a backup in the NFL is rare, especially at the running back and wide receiver positions.\u00a0 Williams is great for giving Bell his rarely needed breaks because he\u2019s a good change of pace with his smaller size and quicker acceleration through the hole.\u00a0 Although he requires a decent backup himself because of injury issues, if Williams isn\u2019t asking for more money than he received in his last contract, he\u2019s worth keeping.\u00a0 Expect the Steelers to re-sign Williams.<\/p>\n<div class=\"getty embed image\" style=\"background-color: #fff; display: inline-block; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; color: #a7a7a7; font-size: 11px; width: 100%; max-width: 594px;\">\n<div style=\"padding: 0; margin: 0; text-align: left;\"><a style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/579556068\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><\/div>\n<div style=\"overflow: hidden; position: relative; height: 0; padding: 73.905724% 0 0 0; width: 100%;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"display: inline-block; position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; margin: 0;\" src=\"\/\/embed.gettyimages.com\/embed\/579556068?et=H0gJ-fflQEJSzDzlf2ZScQ&amp;viewMoreLink=off&amp;sig=f45cvKF06Y36ioFpEW0N5LIzQRJTk1SVLU4YbGWB31E=&amp;caption=true\" width=\"594\" height=\"439\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"margin: 0;\">\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>DeAngelo Williams, 33, is nearing the end of his professional football career.  Should the Pittsburgh Steelers re-sign him to be Le&#8217;Veon Bell&#8217;s backup?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":948,"featured_media":16145,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[39,175,563,2040,98,40,1608,81,629],"class_list":["post-16093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-steelers","tag-afc","tag-afc-north","tag-deangelo-williams","tag-fitzgerald-touissant","tag-leveon-bell","tag-nfl","tag-nfl-free-agency","tag-pittsburgh-steelers","tag-pro-football"],"modified_by":"Ryan Smith","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/948"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16093"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16093\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}