Auburn’s red zone ‘freak show’ ready to take next step

AUBURN | By all accounts, Seth Williams had a fantastic freshman season, finishing third on the team with 26 receptions, tying for first with five touchdown catches and leading the team with a 20.5 average yards per reception.

But last year was just the raw version of Williams. This season promises to be a much more refined vintage.

“I think when Seth got here and when I recruited Seth, I knew he was a heck of an athlete,” Auburn wide receivers coach Kodi Burns said. “I watched him on the basketball court, and he could dunk a basketball every which way, but he was really raw. He wasn't really coached up as far as receiver.

“So it's been awesome to watch his development over the last year. Because, to be honest, when he got here as a freshman, we had to develop him as far as teaching him the offense and the plays to go out there and make plays. Now it's more of, you're going to become a true, pure route-runner. We're looking forward to where he can run every single route in the route tree, which I think is where he's at in this point of his career. He can really become a guy for us. I think he's at that point.”

Williams also lost some weight before adding it back in the right places with an intense winter and summer of workouts. He’ll enter the season around 212-215 pounds.

“He's a guy who has awesome hands,” Burns said. “He can go up and get the ball, which we saw last year. The guy is a freak show in the red zone, especially. But now that he's lost some weight, I think he can open up and run a little bit more, and I think he’ll play a lot more plays throughout the course of the game without getting tired.”

Williams, who said he’s about 98 percent recovered from a back injury that limited him during much of fall camp, spent the offseason studying the receiver position, especially when it comes to recognizing and adjusting to defenses. One of his goals during preseason was to improve his release.

“I got better coming off the line and at the top of the routes and everything. I think I’m understanding the game more as a receiver and actually learning it. I think that’s why I’ve progressed as a receiver,” he said.

And Williams is hungry to show what he and Auburn’s offense can do when they open up against Oregon in 13 more days.

“Knowing I can actually take the next step up and be up there in the top receivers in the nation and have the possibility to be in that group, it makes me even hungrier to go out there and play hard every day,” he said.