Cowboys camp report: Roy's ploy -- catch passes, stop catching grief

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SAN ANTONIO -- They held out hats and shirts and pieces of paper. They screamed his name often, and loudly, directly into the face of Dallas Cowboys receiver Roy Williams as he made his way through a group of fans pleading with him to sign his name on something, anything.

"They love you now," a visitor said to him.

"They'll love anybody for an autograph," Williams said.

Moments earlier, Williams, who is as candid a player as there is in the league, was lamenting how he has spent nearly the entire past year defending himself from many of those same fans and many in the media.

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Williams is tired of it. In fact, he sounds angry when asked about it.

Williams, like most of the fans at the Alamodome here during camp, is a Texan through and through. Yet you would never know it by the way he was treated during the 2008 season.

Every day, it had to feel like Bevo was gorging him, the fan rips, the media rips coming at him from all directions, loaded with venom.

What Williams can't figure out is why. He didn't make the trade for himself. He didn't give up three draft picks to Detroit, including a first-round choice in this past April's draft, and then give himself a new contract that paid him $9 million a season.

The Cowboys did that. But make no mistake about it: The trade put Williams clearly in the crosshairs, which he has dealt with for almost year now.

The now-departed Terrell Owens might have stolen the headlines with his look-at-me ways, but it was Williams who took the abuse. Now it's more so with Owens gone.

They traded all of that for 19 catches last season?

"It kind of pisses me off," Williams said of the abuse. "You're talking about my manhood here, about what I do for a living. For people to criticize me, they have no idea. Everybody has an opinion. I get that. But their opinion is wrong."

With Owens gone, Williams will be even more in the spotlight. Owens was the go-to receiver in Dallas for a lot of things, including controversy, but there is no mistaking his ability to still play the game. He was the Cowboys' leader in receiving yardage last season.

Owens will be missed from a football standpoint. But the Cowboys decided to release him for a couple of reasons. One was that they were tired of his act. More importantly, they think Williams is ready to step up and be the No. 1 receiver.

"I really think he's excited and relishes and embraces the opportunity to be the No. 1 guy," tight end Jason Witten said.

When Williams was acquired from the Lions last October, the thinking was he would team with Owens and Witten to form a dynamic pass-catching trio. Williams didn't do his part -- far from it.

He ended up with 19 catches for 198 yards and just one touchdown, which wasn't even thrown by starting quarterback Tony Romo, but came from the arm of Brad Johnson. Romo broke his thumb right before Williams arrived and Williams was bothered by a foot problem after that, but he said neither contributed to his low production. Nor did learning a new offense.

"It wasn't because of me," Williams said. "It wasn't different for me. It was the same offense I played in for the Lions. It was different for the quarterback, getting to throw to me. I came in the middle of the season. You don't know my speed. You don't know where I'm going to be. You don't know how to throw it to me, so you're not going to get me the ball."

So was he open?

"Yea, I was open," he said. "Once again, it goes back to the trust factor with the quarterback."

Williams, who threw with Romo for weeks leading up to camp, said the trust is there now. "No question," he said.

Romo seemed to agree.

"We always had a good rapport," Romo said. "Just like anything, the more time you see each other, the better the throws are going to be."

It helps that Romo doesn't have Owens in his ear complaining all the time. There are some close to the Cowboys who think Romo forced the ball to Owens too much because of that, contributing to Williams' low production.

"I don't demand the ball, I don't go public," Williams said. "That's not me."

Cowboys fans expected the Williams who caught 82 passes for 1,310 yards and seven touchdowns in Detroit in 2006. Instead, they got nothing close to that, which led to the ambush.

"It was our fault," Cowboys coach Wade Phillips said. "We didn't get him the ball enough."

To help prepare for this season, Williams once again spent the summer working in his hometown of Odessa at Permian High School (yes, that one). He ran in the heat of the afternoon and the result was a leaner, faster receiver.

At 6-feet-3, he's now down to 209 pounds. He calls it the "Larry Fitzgerald effect."

"I saw him drop the weight last year and it helped him, so I'm hoping it helps me," Williams said.

He looked faster in the work I watched. Yet he was strong enough to handle the press coverage the Oakland Raiders showed him in the first preseason game. On one of the first plays, he beat press and was wide open but the ball went the other way.

"That would have been a 97-yard touchdown play that would have shut everybody up," Williams said. "But he didn't see me and went to the strong side."

There's that anger again.

After that preseason game, Williams was told the announcers had been critical; after a play, they said he wouldn't have done the same thing a year ago. That set him off.

"What makes me so mad is that people listen to them and think they are right," Williams said. "They're talking to the viewers and they're all going to agree."

During camp, Williams does a lot of things to mix it up and take the monotony out of it. He picks a kid each day to come down to the field and be his personal water boy. He also helped put in a system where receivers pay $10 fines for dropped passes. And he changed his jersey number from his No. 11 to his No. 4, his college number.

"The first day I wore it, people were asking who that No. 4 was because he was pretty good," Williams said. "Then they told them it was me, and they probably said, 'He sucks.'"

He doesn't suck. But he has to be much more than what he was a year ago. If Williams doesn't put up big numbers, the Cowboys will be in trouble.

If that happens, even those in the autograph line might not have much love for Williams.