The NFL season is young, but it’s already been a roller coaster for the Washington Commanders. Washington started out 0-2 and lost starting quarterback Jayden Daniels to a dislocated elbow in Week 2, and its Week 3 matchup against the defending Super Bowl champion Seattle Seahawks looked like a foregone conclusion. However, the Commanders, led by veteran backup Marcus Mariota, went out and won it.
To complicate matters even further, wideout Terry McLaurin was a limited participant in Friday’s practice and is questionable for Sunday’s game against the Indianapolis Colts in London.
With McLaurin potentially sidelined, rookie wideout Antonio Williams could be a fantasy-viable option to replace him. He’s available in almost all leagues, per FantasyPros, making him potentially worth a pickup off of the open market.
Results and Usage
Williams got his NFL career off to a hot start in Week 1 against the Philadelphia Eagles, turning four catches into 64 yards and a touchdown, but despite seeing his snap share increase from 37.1% in Week 1 to 49.3% in Week 2, he had a much quieter performance (three catches, 24 yards). Then, Williams played 40.6% of the team’s offensive snaps in Week 3, catching two of his four targets for 15 yards. His performance in Week 1 was fantasy-worthy, but he wouldn’t have been an asset in either Weeks 2 or 3.
Williams was highly productive in college with Clemson, managing 75 catches for 904 yards and an ACC-leading 11 touchdowns as a junior before adding another 604 yards and four scores as a senior. He also threw touchdown passes on trick plays in both his junior and senior seasons, and Dan Quinn experimented with it in Week 2, allowing him to heave one deep for McLaurin that fell incomplete. Overall, Williams’ impressive hands, agility, and versatile skillset could allow him to become a quality starter, and he’s equally capable of playing out wide and in the slot.
Williams has already shown some of his promise in his first few games in the NFL. He’s produced 3.1 yards of separation per average targeted route, an above-average figure among all players with at least 10 targets, and he’s been better after the catch than expected. In fact, Williams ranks 19th among 100 qualified receivers by PFF’s offensive grades, the best mark of any Washington receiver. He’s received the third-most targets on the team, exactly half of both McLaurin’s and Stefon Diggs’ workload, and he’s been far more productive than either Diggs or McLaurin with his targets.
Future Outlook
If McLaurin plays, the Commanders have enough depth at the wide receiver position that Williams isn’t fantasy-viable. He still has some competition even if McLaurin sits, as Dyami Brown (who caught 30 of his 40 targets for 308 yards and a score in 2024) has appeared in a higher percentage of Washington’s offensive snaps than Williams and garnered more targets in Week 2. Treylon Burks and Jaylin Lane are also veterans who played for the Commanders last season, even if they’ve had a smaller role in the offense so far in 2026.
Still, there are some things that work in Williams’ favor; McLaurin’s average target has come 11.6 yards beyond the line of scrimmage this season, nearly identical to both Williams’ and Brown’s, while Burks and Lane have predominantly been used as deep threats throughout their careers. Both Daniels and Mariota have also been more efficient when throwing to Williams than Brown. That skill-set might not line up so well with Mariota’s, since he’s been more effective on long shots (more than 20 yards downfield) than on intermediate or short-range throws over the last couple of seasons, but McLaurin has been plenty effective when playing with Mariota, and Williams was a good deep threat in college.
This season, Washington has had a fairly run-centered offense, keeping the ball on the ground at the 10th-highest rate, but in the win over Seattle, its passing game was far more effective than its running game. For the season so far, Mariota has been pretty solid, completing 63.8% of his passes for four touchdowns and no picks and registering a 109.7 passer rating, which would be the highest of his career across a full campaign. On the other hand, running back Jacory Croskey-Merritt ranks seventh-to-last in yards per attempt and fifth-to-last in success rate among running backs with at least 20 carries. Perhaps Quinn will trust Mariota to fire away at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
Williams should have a pretty easy matchup on Sunday against the Colts, who have allowed the fifth-most yards and the 12th-most FPTS per game to opposing wideouts. Although Indianapolis gave up two first-round picks and wide receiver Adonai Mitchell for cornerback Sauce Gardner in one of last season’s blockbuster deals, Gardner has had a mediocre season, ranking just 30th of 99 qualified corners by PFF’s coverage grades. Plus, Williams will likely spend plenty of time in the slot, where he’d face off against Justin Walley (91st of 99). He’s worth starting in deeper leagues.
