RENTON — Not too long ago, Mike Williams was a former first-round pick looking for a second chance in the NFL. On Monday, less than a year after the Seahawks gave him a tryout, Williams made sure his future will be in Seattle.
Williams, who many figured was done with football after he spent two years out of the NFL, signed a three-year extension with the Seahawks, the latest chapter in one of the most remarkable comeback stories of this NFL season.
“It’s a statement that Mike has come back for real and he’s really made it to the point where he has instilled the confidence in us to go ahead and keep him around for a good while,” said Seahawks coach Pete Carroll, who was also Williams’ coach at USC. “And he’s still just getting started. This is Mike’s return — we don’t know, none of us know the impact of being out two years … I think it’s a very good thing for Mike, it’s a very good thing for the organization.”
The terms of the contract weren’t released, but Williams said he was “smiling a lot” when he signed the deal. Carroll added that the contract is “structured well so that Mike knows he has to keep working and doing things right and keep his roles in order and all of that.”
Williams, who finished the regular season with a team-high 65 catches and 751 receiving yards, might have been able to make more money had he explored free agency, but said he wanted to stay in Seattle if he could after Carroll and the Seahawks gave him a chance to get back into the league.
“I always felt like I needed to be loyal to Coach Carroll,” said Williams. “He gave me opportunity. So obviously there’s some excitement about maybe free agency and the possibilities but I know I want to be here and if we could get close to where I wanted to be, I was going to make it happen.”
Williams, the No. 10 overall pick in 2005, never lived up to expectations in Detroit, and after short stints in Oakland and Tennessee, he found himself overweight and out of work after the 2007 season. Many figured he had wasted an opportunity and would never play again, but after dedicating a year to getting back into shape, Carroll gave Williams a chance, and that gamble has paid dividends for both team and player.
“Not at all,” Williams said when asked if he expected things to work out this well. “I was talking with some friends and they were saying how they didn’t even expect me to be here. They thought I would come here and get released and then maybe make it somewhere else.”
But Williams didn’t need to make it somewhere else. He made it in Seattle, and after proving himself in Carroll’s competition-driven system, he’ll be staying in Seattle for a while.
“I hope it’s a very obvious statement,” Carroll said. “I hope it’s a clear statement of guys fighting for who they are and what they want to become. There’s nothing more powerful than that kind of will behind a guy’s effort. So we want to make sure that that’s clear. So hopefully this will ring loud and clear for a lot of people in the program.”
Herald Writer John Boyle: jboyle@heraldnet.com. For more Seahawks coverage, check out the Seahawks blog at heraldnet.com/seahawksblog
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