Ryan Williams excited to finally be with the team

Ryan Williams may have been a surprise pick for the Cardinals when they nabbed him with the 38th overall selection back in April’s draft, but once a Cardinal Williams wanted to be just that: a Cardinal.

The NFL’s lockout delayed the process, but Williams and the team finally agreed to terms Sunday and now the former Virginia Tech star is, well, pleased to be with his new teammates.

“I’m very excited, I feel like a little kid out here,” he said. “Seeing Larry Fitzgerald, [Darnell] Dockett, I mean guys like that, I was watching them, playing with them on games and now I’m with these guys.

“It feels good, you know, that I made it and I just have to work as hard as these guys.”

Williams certainly has his work cutout for him. The Cardinals traded away leading rusher Tim Hightower, in a way to make room for the rookie, and he’s expected to pair with Beanie Wells and provide the team with a solid running game, the likes of which they’ve rarely had in the desert.

“They opened a pathway for me, and if I don’t perform and if I don’t do what I need to do to get on the field then I’m going to look bad and it’s going to make them look bad too,” Williams said. “So I don’t want anybody looking bad.”

In fact, the only ones Williams wants to make look bad are the teams that didn’t draft him. Incidentally, that would be every other team in the league. Good news for the Cardinals, bad for the teams on their schedule.

“Just defenses in general, I just want to make them sick that they passed up,” he said. “Me playing football, I always play with a chip on my shoulder, so if you’re an opposing team I’m going to have to try and run my hardest against you.”

ArizonaSports.com’s Kyndra de St. Aubin contributed to this report

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