Duke’s up for Esk’s tilt with Lions
Williams hopes to provide deep threat in Edmonton, put off-field slugfest in past
It wasn’t your normal run-of-themill, stock sort of quote you’d expect from a player attending a National Football League combine.
“I’m a first-round pick no matter what, but off the field I’m a seventh-round pick. My character is a seventh-round pick,” said D’haquille (Duke) Williams.
Turned out his character was “Don’t-draft-me-at-all.”
Duke Williams was not selected in last year’s NFL draft. He went from being projected as perhaps the No. 1 receiver going into his senior college football season to being dismissed by Auburn at mid-season as a result of a series of incidents, including punching four people outside a bar.
Teammate Xavier Dampeer required jaw surgery and was out for the rest of the season.
Williams was a much-publicized and celebrated distraction to the team, was often late to practice and had been previously suspended two other times, one of which resulted in him missing the 2015 Outback Bowl.
“I made a lot of mistakes. I was really immature,” he said. “I hurt a lot of people including my teammates and coaches who gave me chance after chance. When I lost football, I felt I lost a lot of things.”
That’s a lot of baggage to bring across the border.
“I’m just taking it one day at a time as an Edmonton Eskimo and trying to get as far away from it as I can,” he said.
Williams appears to have made the Eskimos as the designated receiver to make up for the loss of Darrel Walker to the NFL.
The Eskimos, who don’t open the season until Saturday in Vancouver against the B.C. Lions, refuse to reveal the exact status of any of the new players who didn’t get cut or put on the practice roster, in terms of whether they’ll be starters, back-ups or on the injured list. But new general manager Brock Sunderland made it clear Williams will be in the lineup.
“Duke played himself onto the roster. Any time you prove you are a good football player, we’re going to find room for you. He certainly proved that and not just in the two pre-season games but throughout training camp and in the mini camp,” he said.
Sunderland says Williams is going to play.
“He’s going to be on the field, whether it’s as a starter or the first play or as a rotational guy. He’s going to be active and playing a lot of football for us.”
In two pre-season games, Williams had six receptions for 182 yards, including a 90-yard touchdown pass from Zach Kline in the home game against the Calgary Stampeders.
Of all the new players that fans managed to get a glimpse of in the pre-season, the two that clearly caught their imagination were Kline, the quarterback who had been cut at mini camp in Las Vegas but was brought in a week into main camp, and Williams.
One of the big questions going into the season is how Edmonton might go about making up for the loss of receiver Walker, who caught 109 passes for 1,589 yards and left for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Is it possible Williams can make up for a significant slice of that while at the same time becoming a good teammate and a person Eskimos fans want to have representing them in green and gold?
Williams is the youngest of eight kids who, after not playing football in high school in Louisiana (he chose basketball) ended up playing two years in community college before heading to Auburn, where he totally messed everything up after he was being projected as a top pick.
The Esks invited him to Vegas for mini-camp and back for the main camp, and his ability has been obvious.
“On the field, the coaches gave me chances to make plays,” Williams said. “The community so far is good. And my teammates treat me like a brother. I’m new, but they all took me in.”
Most of them, he believes, know his history of being something less than a great teammate.
“I’m very grateful for this opportunity. With anybody else, I couldn’t step into their home, but the Eskimos gave me the opportunity.
“With me being around players like they have here, all I can do is better myself as a person off the field. I already know what I can do on the field. But the questions about me have always been off the field.
“I’m just going to follow these leaders and take it all in and learn how to be a great person from them and find out how to have more character off the field.”