{"id":8429,"date":"2026-04-27T18:26:19","date_gmt":"2026-04-27T18:26:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gpstrianglenews.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/27\/former-dutch-fork-clemson-wr-headed-to-washington\/"},"modified":"2026-04-27T18:26:19","modified_gmt":"2026-04-27T18:26:19","slug":"former-dutch-fork-clemson-wr-headed-to-washington","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gpstrianglenews.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/27\/former-dutch-fork-clemson-wr-headed-to-washington\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Dutch Fork, Clemson WR headed to Washington"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><i>(Photo by Clemson Tigers)<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>By Thomas Grant Jr.<\/i><\/p>\n<p>Antonio Williams is now a Washington Commander.<\/p>\n<p>The former Dutch Fork All-State and two-time All-ACC wide receiver was selected Friday in the third round and 71st overall at the NFL Draft.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;They&#8217;re getting a guy that&#8217;s going to come in and work and be dependable and reliable every day,&rdquo; Williams said. &ldquo;I think consistency is what&#8217;s going to separate me from the rest, so that&#8217;s my goal. Just put my head down and go to work every day.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I would say I&#8217;m just a smooth operator out there on the field, whether that&#8217;s running a route, making somebody miss, making an acrobatic catch. I just play real smooth out there and just have a lot of confidence in myself and what I can do.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Washington general manager Adam Peters said they were &ldquo;really impressed&rdquo; by Williams and had been scouting him for months.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;He&rsquo;s a top-notch young man,&rdquo; Peters said of Williams. &ldquo;&#8230; He&rsquo;s an NFL route runner. &#8230; We really like the versatility of him as well. He played a lot of inside (receiver) this year. He played outside last year. That&rsquo;s really the thing that differentiated him.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>During Williams&rsquo; career at Clemson, he caught 208 passes for 2,336 yards and 21 touchdowns in 43 games. He finished fourth all-time in career receptions and tied with Mike Williams for fourth-most career touchdown receptions.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;Antonio is a day one performer when he walks in their building,&rdquo; Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney offered. &ldquo;Antonio has really lived like a pro, prepared like a pro, played like a pro for his last couple years. He is a highly skilled receiver. If he was 6-2, he&#8217;d be a first-round pick.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;They&#8217;re going to be able to sleep well at night knowing Antonio is a difference maker in the community and he&rsquo;s an absolute baller that plays the game the way it&rsquo;s supposed to be played,&rdquo; Clemson wide receivers coach Tyler Grisham said. &ldquo;They are getting a guy that loves football and loves to compete. He is going to make plays all over the field from multiple positions.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>As a member of the Silver Foxes, Williams won two state titles. He had 137 career catches for 2,458 yards and 23 touchdowns and was selected to the Under Armour All-American game.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;We are proud of Tonio &ndash; great young man who has represented Dutch Fork well,&rdquo; Dutch Fork head coach Tom Knotts said. &ldquo;He is poised for great things in Washington.&rdquo;<i><br \/><\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(Photo by Clemson Tigers) By Thomas Grant Jr. Antonio Williams is now a Washington Commander. The former Dutch Fork All-State and two-time All-ACC wide receiver was selected Friday in the third round and 71st overall at the NFL Draft. &#8220;They&#8217;re getting a guy that&#8217;s going to come in and work<span class=\"more-link\"><a href=\"https:\/\/gpstrianglenews.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/27\/former-dutch-fork-clemson-wr-headed-to-washington\/\">Continue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8430,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[52],"tags":[1004,1304],"class_list":["entry","author-john-griggs","post-8429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-college-football","tag-nfl-draft"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/gpstrianglenews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Antonio-Williams_2026_630x350.jpg?fit=630%2C350&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpstrianglenews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpstrianglenews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpstrianglenews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpstrianglenews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpstrianglenews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8429"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gpstrianglenews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8429\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpstrianglenews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpstrianglenews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpstrianglenews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpstrianglenews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}