Notes: Jamaal Williams doesn’t ‘give a —’ about Hard Knocks, focused on football

The Detroit Lions made several veteran players available to the media on Wednesday, and the PR department made the highly intelligent decision to lead with their superstar: Jamaal Williams.

Williams, staying true to his nature, started with a bang.

“It feels good (to be back),” Williams said. “Great to see new people and old people, same teammates. It’s just really us coming with a new mindset, just coming with it already, knowing we’re going for a Super Bowl.”

Williams would bring up the Lions and “Super Bowl” eight times during his 10-minute presser, noting that it’s a goal of his and the rest of team. That would be quite an impressive leap for a team that won just three games last season, but Williams has the confidence it can be done because of the people around him.

“My teammates, my coaches,” Williams explained. “As long as everybody got the one mindset of we’re going for the Super Bowl and we’re gonna win the Super Bowl—well, we’ve gotta be able to get to the playoffs, Super Bowl, all that—but our main goal is to get that ring.”

But the fun didn’t stop there with Williams, as it rarely does.

Williams poked fun at a question about the “core” of the Lions roster, baiting the questioner into admitting Williams was in that group, with Williams—and the rest of the press room—laughing along the way.

He talked about Goff being funny, focused, and... tall. He joked about slimming down so people could see his abs when he took his shirt off. And about keeping his full attention on the Detroit Lions and what they are doing.

But there was one other topic that Williams was highly opinionated about: HBO’s “Hard Knocks”. When asked to share his thoughts on the television crew getting behind-the-scenes access to the organization, Williams’ response was very Jamaal-esque:

“I don’t give a (expletive),” Williams whispered before returning to his normal voice. “I don’t care. I just wanna play football. All that is to me know is more cameras, walking around staring at me. I don’t care. I just want to play football. And I want to win a Super Bowl this year. Forget the Hard Knocks, all that stuff. It’s just gonna happen, you know what I mean? People think I’m funny. I don’t do it on purpose. It’s just me. I just walk around being me all the time. That’s it. I can’t fake nothing. Like, they’re gonna see it. They’re gonna see it on my face. Every time I got a camera in my face I’m just gonna look at em (makes face) We got people here that do that already. People here already know if they got a camera on me, I ain’t gonna smile? Maybe. We’ll see.”

You can watch the entire Williams’ 10-minute press conference in the video below (or here if it doesn’t load), but the Lions wisely edited the video to remove the exploitative to keep things family-friendly.

But, if you want to see the unedited response to the Hard Knocks question, we’ve got that for you too. (Warning: Language)

And now, onto the rest of today’s notes:

• Two of the five Lions waived yesterday were claimed off waivers today:

• The Lions have made significant headway in terms of their dead cap this year.

• Ryan Ford of the Detroit Free Press takes a closer look at Jameson Williams’ Alabama pedigree and how that helped him become the latest first-round wide receiver drafted out of Tuscaloosa.

• Kyle Meinke of MLive breaks down expectations for each of the Lions’ draft picks, it’s worth your time, but you’ll need an MLive subscription to get access to it.

• The Sun-God will be looking to build on this stat line this season.

• Save the date: Lions third-round pick Kerby Joseph will be signing autographs in Livonia on Saturday, May 28th

• Happy Birthday, Alim McNeill!