College football is about the grand stage, big moments and extravagant introductions.
For Ryan Williams, that greeting came at the climax of the sports’ most-watched game of the opening month. The Alabama freshman receiver’s acrobatic heroics didn’t just secure the 75-yard, game-winning touchdown against No. 2 Georgia, it was a statement.
It was art.
There were 100,000-plus slacked jaws in Bryant-Denny Stadium that September night -- stunned by a catch and everything that followed. The ABC-TV audience peaked at 14.1 million just as Williams made his salutation.
Down in Fairhope, Don Prosch was in that television audience, awed for the same reason as Christopher Stuart in Birmingham. It wasn’t just the speed, the concentration or the footwork. Prosch and Stuart saw something incredibly rare in Williams and they’re uniquely qualified to assess it.
Now in his early 70s, Prosch was a multi-sport athlete who played football before finding his true calling. For years, he was a professional dancer -- studying under the legendary Martha Graham in New York before touring Europe with renowned ballet companies.
What he saw in Williams that night against Georgia was incredible.
“Well, he’s just got such eloquence about him,” Prosch said. “His footwork is much more like dance than football. Football players, generally speaking, are power forward -- big quads -- mostly forward and back. He’s, he’s got very light footwork. I mean, comparable to a dancer like Fred Astaire. His footwork is so light. He’s a very atypical athlete.”
That catch helped save Alabama’s season, giving it a marquee win over Georgia that’s keeping the Tide in playoff conversations entering Saturday’s visit to No. 14 LSU. A night game in Tiger Stadium is yet another grand stage to challenge Williams in his debut season.
Georgia coach Kirby Smart said Williams’ impressive toolkit goes beyond his footwork.
“I call it suddenness, twitch, quickness,” Smart said. “We always refer to it as initial quickness. He has elite initial quickness. Feet are a part of that but not the only part that makes him special. It’s the combination.
“A lot of guys have great ball skills and sometimes they have great quickness but they don’t have great long speed. But when you combine track speed with initial quickness and ball skills, you get a really special player, which he is.”
Special enough to lead Alabama in receptions (35), yards (702), and touchdown catches (seven). He led the nation in average yards per catch for several weeks and is now 11th with 20.1 yards per reception. Among freshmen, he leads the FBS with 702 receiving yards, a nose ahead of Ohio State phenom Jeremiah Smith’s 678.
