Jordan Williams-Lambert wasn’t sure if he met his coaches’ expectations Sunday at Mosaic Stadium.
“The coaches were big on blocking for me in this game,” the Saskatchewan Roughriders’ first-year slotback said after his team’s 40-27 CFL victory over the Calgary Stampeders. “That was one of the things I wanted to show.
“Unfortunately it was 10 catches and me catching the ball and running, but I hope it showed my improvement in blocking on the film.”
In the eighth game of his CFL career, Williams-Lambert set single-game career highs with 10 catches and 152 receiving yards in the Roughriders’ win. He now leads Saskatchewan’s receivers this season in receptions (32), receiving yards (393) and gains of 30 yards or more (four).
“He has certainly been a good player for us,” Roughriders head coach-GM Chris Jones said. “He’s tough and he’s physical.”
Then came the bad news for Williams-Lambert.
“He needs to block better,” Jones added. “He needs to continue to block because even (Sunday) there were times when he didn’t get his blocks.
“But he caught the football — he had 10 catches — and there were two or three of them that were really tough catches. That’s what you’ve got to have.”
Williams-Lambert had three catches for 51 yards on Saskatchewan’s first possession Sunday, but nothing more in the first half. He added four catches for 38 yards in the third quarter and three grabs for 63 yards in the fourth, including a leaping reception for 39 yards between two defenders.
He made five second-down catches in the contest and each one produced a first down.
Overall, he was targeted 10 times and caught all 10 throws, giving him a completion rate this season of 80 per cent (32 catches on 40 targets). It’s the best such number among CFL receivers with at least 30 receptions in 2018.
“He’s a really hard worker,” quarterback Zach Collaros said. “He believes in me and I believe in him. When he gets an opportunity, he really makes the most of it …
“He doesn’t seem like a rookie out there, especially the way he catches the ball in traffic.”
On Tuesday, Williams-Lambert was named one of the CFL’s top performers of the week. So was Roughriders cornerback Nick Marshall, who had a pick-six and a three-yard TD run Sunday.
The 6-foot-3, 228-pound Williams-Lambert played four seasons at Ball State University, where he caught 200 passes for 2,723 yards and 24 touchdowns in 44 career games. He left the school ranked fourth in Cardinals history in catches and receiving yards and tied for third in TD receptions.
He signed as an undrafted free agent with the NFL’s New Orleans Saints in May of 2016 and spent that season on their practice roster, but was released with an injury settlement that August.
Rather than looking for employment in another field, Williams-Lambert opted to keep pursuing his dream.
“It was more of, ‘I know I can play this game. I know the skill I have. I know what I’ve been blessed with,’ so there was no doubt in my mind I was going to touch the field again,” he said.
“During the off-season, I worked out every day. Not everybody sees that part of the life, where you get sent home and you have to work on your own behind the scenes. That’s stressful. It’s a stressful game, but it’s the game we play.
“(The benefit of the off-season work) is just now showing on the field, so I’m grateful.”
“Football is a tough game, so anytime you get to be on the field, it’s a great opportunity…”
Williams-Lambert may have decided he wanted to keep playing, but he still had to earn the opportunity — and that led him to a Roughriders workout in Akron, Ohio.
“I went there being positive that I was going to make it,” said the Indianapolis resident. “I thought I was; actually, I knew I was. I went there and did what I could to try to show them that I could play this game at a high level.”
His showing in Akron earned him a spot at Saskatchewan’s mini-camp in Bradenton, Fla. He was among the best receivers there, thus earning him an invitation to the Roughriders’ training camp in Saskatoon.
His performance against veteran defensive backs in camp and in pre-season games was enough to convince the Roughriders to release veteran slotbacks like Bakari Grant and Chad Owens at the end of camp.
Now, after surviving every step of the cutdown process to date, Williams-Lambert is eight games into his first CFL season.
“Football is a tough game, so anytime you get to be on the field, it’s a great opportunity,” he said. “I know a lot of people who couldn’t be here today because they had injuries or something went bad. Every day on the field is a blessing.”
Like every newcomer to the CFL, Williams-Lambert had to quickly build up a wo
rking knowledge of the Canadian game. He credited his teammates with helping him do that — and it eventually led to a 152-yard game.
“We go out and we work every day,” Williams-Lambert said. “(Media outlets) don’t show practice, the practice week and everything. We’re working on little things every day in practice so that we can correlate it to the game. It showed (Sunday) how it correlated to the game.”
Williams-Lambert has admitted that his goal is to return to the NFL someday, so a showing like the one he had Sunday could help that cause. But he stressed that his focus currently is on succeeding in the CFL, which he did against Calgary.
“It means a lot to me,” Williams-Lambert said of Sunday’s outing. “I put in a lot of work in the off-season and the pre-season. I had a lot of people help me and I wanted to make them happy, make myself happy and make the people at home happy by having a good game.”
