LA Chargers: 3 former Chargers to pursue in free agency
By Jason Reed
3. Tyrell Williams
Alex Insdorf gave his take on a potential Tyrell Williams reunion in an article on Sunday and I am reiterating some of the same points that he is making. You can check out his article on Williams here.
Williams was released by the Las Vegas Raiders this past week as he never quite panned out for the team. The Raiders gave him a big contract following the 2018 season and he could not stay healthy.
Williams had a solid 2019 season that was in-line with the kind of production he had with the Bolts but was not in-line with how much the Raiders were paying him. He was hurt and missed all of 2020 and now, he is a free agent.
Personally, I think this would be an excellent signing. There is nothing wrong with adding receiver depth, especially when the Chargers know what they are getting with that depth and can get that depth for relatively cheap.
There are two paths the Bolts could go down this offseason and Williams makes sense in both.
The first path is simply to stick with the receivers that the team has and adding Williams to share snaps as the WR3 with Tyron Johnson would be great for depth purposes. Someone will naturally get hurt and having that over-qualified WR4 is huge.
The second path is the team waiving or trading Mike Williams to free up his cap hit. If that happens, Tyrell makes sense as the Chargers could free up $15 million in Mike Williams and then bring in Tyrell Williams at $4-5 million to fill the void. Tyrell can absolutely produce what Mike did last season.
Personally, I don’t think the LA Chargers are going to take a receiver in the 2021 NFL Draft just because they took two receivers last year that still have not gotten their opportunity and the team has other needs to draft early in the draft.
Signing someone such as Williams is a great way to get by for this season before filling in some of the other roster needs and being able to draft a receiver higher in the draft that will make an instant impact in 2022.
Out of all the cheap free-agent wide receiver options, I legitimately would most want the LA Chargers to sign Tyrell Williams.