Former Pittsburgh Steelers running back DeAngelo Williams is still waiting for an NFL team to come calling. During an interview on Adam Schefter's podcast, Williams named four teams who shouldn't bother reaching out to him. Among those teams are the Dallas Cowboys.
Williams grew up a San Francisco 49ers fan. The rivalry between his favorite NFL team and its bitter rival of the '80s and '90s is still fresh in his mind. Being a die-hard fan, Williams didn't have too many kind words to share about the Cowboys or their fans while speaking to Schefter.
"Some will say that I'm a true fan, and I totally get it," Williams said. "And some would be like, 'You're stupid, you're crazy.' And then the fan base of the [Cowboys] is going be absolutely livid, but who cares? That's why we're fans. That's where the fandom comes from.
"So I grew up and was raised as a 49ers fan...My fandom for the team I was raised as will not allow me to go to the Cowboys. I'm an '80s baby. I was born in 1983 and the 49ers ruled the '80s. The Cowboys somewhat did something in the '90s. I even refuse to give them that as a Niners fan. Now I'm always loyal to the team that signs my checks."
Williams continued by describing why he is a not a big fan of the Cowboys' fanbase and how the 2016 season validated his perception of it.
"The Cowboys, they win. They just don't ever show up during the playoffs. They always disappear in the playoffs. I've got a great depiction of the Cowboys' fan base. During the regular season last year, they were on cloud nine. You couldn't tell them anything because they were going to win the 'ship. That's all they said. Fans just got extremely super annoying. Then, the minute they lose, they either got cheated, somebody was hurt, the excuses start flowing. It's just amazing to me. That fan base just in general, they can't handle defeat. Still, to this day, they say that the Dez Bryant catch against the Green Bay Packers was a catch."
The three other teams who Williams refuses to play for are the Cleveland Browns, Jacksonville Jaguars, and the Carolina Panthers. The Panthers make sense considering the way he was unceremoniously discarded by Carolina in 2015.
The other two teams, Cleveland and Jacksonville, are just historically bad and Williams wants no part of that while noting the Browns have not done much of anything in his lifetime.
Williams has spent the past two seasons in Pittsburgh backing up running back Le'Veon Bell and has served admirably in that role. In 2015, an injury to Bell forced Williams into the starting running back role. He ended up carrying the football 200 times for 907 yards and 11 touchdowns. Williams ended up as the NFL's fifth-highest graded running back by Pro Football Focus that season.
In 2016, Williams carried the football 98 times for 343 yards and four touchdowns, starting the first three games of the season due to a suspension being served by Bell. After two weeks, Williams was the league leader in rushing yards rushing, going for 143 yards against the Washington Redskins during Week 1 and 94 yards against the Cincinnati Bengals during Week 2.
Williams has 8,096 rushing yards and nine touchdowns over his career in regular season play.
