Former NFL receiver Mike Williams has shown signs of improvement as he continues to fight for his life, days after erroneous reports of his death due to a construction accident circulated.
Williams, 36, was reportedly pronounced dead Tuesday, per the New York Post and other outlets, after supposedly suffering a serious head injury while performing electrical work in Florida on Aug. 21. A day later, the Tampa Bay Times reported the ex-Buccaneers and Bills wideout was still alive and had been placed on life support at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Tampa.
With questions surrounding Williams’s health, Tierney Lyle, the mother of Williams’s 8-year-old daughter, confirmed Thursday that Williams was in fact responsive and set to be taken off a ventilator.
“He goes hard in everything he does,” Lyle told Buffalo’s WIVB-TV, before asking for prayers for Williams’s continued recovery. “He doesn’t give up easily at all.”
WIVB also reported that Williams’s head injury was not initially considered life-threatening, but things took a turn on Sept. 1 when he was hospitalized and put in an induced coma after a laceration caused by the injury became infected.
According to a GoFundMe set up on Williams’s behalf, a message from his father, Wendell Muhammed, who was raising funds to travel to see his son, stated Williams suffered a “massive head injury” after a steel beam fell on his head.
As a result, Muhammad said Williams lost consciousness on Sept. 1 due to “swelling in his brain and swelling on his spinal cord that was ruptured,” injuries that “resulted in complete paralysis in his right arm as well as his lower body from the waist down.”
As of Saturday, Williams remains in the intensive care unit, per the Times.
A fourth-round draft pick by the Bucs in 2010, Williams, a former Syracuse standout, finished second in Offensive Rookie of the Year voting after logging 65 passes for 964 yards with 11 touchdown catches. After playing four years with Tampa Bay and joining his hometown Bills in 2014 for his final season, Williams finished his pro career with 223 catches for 3,089 yards and 26 TDs.
