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Williams lacks college pass-rushing production but has a high upside
This offseason, we’re hoping to write up prospect profiles on every single draftable player that the Green Bay Packers bring in on a pre-draft visit. The third potential first-round defensive end on our list is Georgia’s Mykel Williams, who battled through a Grade 2 ankle sprain during the 2024 season.
According to Williams, he was injured in the Bulldogs’ first game of the year, which limited to him to about 60 percent. Even though he ran a 40-yard dash in the 4.75-second to 4.82-second range at his pro day, Williams will have another private workout for teams on April 18th, along with his teammate Jalon Walker, a sign that he’s still recovering from that ankle injury.
So, instead of just looking at one year of film for Williams’ scouting report, I went through both his 2024 and 2023 seasons to better understand what type of an athlete he was before the injury. While his 2023 film did sort out some of the athletic questions about Williams, there were still some aspects of his scouting report that fell short of a surefire top-10 selection.
Only 20 years old, Williams won’t be able to drink legally in the United States until late June. The former five-star recruit came in with high expectations when he joined the Georgia Bulldogs, which he met by earning back-to-back second-team All-SEC honors over the last two seasons. According to On3’s industry rankings, Williams was viewed as the sixth-best recruit in the 2022 high school class, only behind Walter Nolen, Travis Hunter, Luther Burden, Sonny Styles and Domani Jackson, one spot ahead of Shemar Stewart, who the Packers also brought in on a visit.
Georgia essentially used Williams as their replacement for Travon Walker, who went first overall in the 2022 NFL Draft. Like Walker, Williams often played inside the offensive tackle in a 4i technique rather than truly playing the edge. This limited his pass-rushing production. Here’s the good news: Walker also had very poor production in the passing game and is coming off of back-to-back seasons where he registered double-digit sacks for the Jacksonville Jaguars.
According to YouTuber Brett Krollman, Williams is actually one of the few defensive end prospects who produced less in “true pass sets” than Stewart in this class. If you’re a big pass rush win rate guy, then Williams isn’t going to be the player that you’re going to be banging the table for on draft day.
If you want to get a feel for how Williams was played at Georgia, below is a video with several All-22 clips of Williams’ reps against the Texas Longhorns, where he played against two future NFL tackles.
At 6’5” and 260 pounds, Williams certainly has the frame to play defensive end at the NFL level. According to Mockdraftable, he has 81st percentile arm length and an 86th percentile wingspan for edge defenders, which is apparent as soon as you turn...
