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Alabama WR Ryan Williams catches a pass vs. Michigan.
During his true freshman season in 2024, Alabama Crimson Tide wide receiver Ryan Coleman-Williams looked like one of the best wideouts in the country and a lock to be a future first-round pick in the NFL Draft.
Coleman-Williams caught 48 passes for 865 yards and eight touchdowns, earning freshman All-American honors. However, in his sophomore season, a major problem emerged. His numbers looked similar on the surface. But suddenly, Coleman-Williams was among the nation’s leaders is drops.
Had he just forgotten how to catch the football? Was the one-time future superstar just a flash in the pan? As it turns out, there was a much simpler, biological issue.
Ryan Coleman-Williams Couldn’t Properly See The Football
Alex Scarbrough of ESPN was curious about Coleman-Williams’ issues and why they’ve seemingly disappeared in 2026. What he discovered was something that nobody could have imagined.
“I sat down with (head athletic trainer) Jeff (Allen) and watched the Georgia game,” Coleman-Williams told Scarbrough. “I was going over a go-ball and I just completely missed it.
“It was because I didn’t see it,” he added.
So, what’s the issue? Coleman-Williams went through all the normal vision tests, each of which came back fine.
“You just sit there and say, ‘Well, yeah, that guy he’s dropping the ball,'” Allen explained. “And it starts to turn into almost like a mental thing and people think, ‘Well, it’s a mental issue.’ It’s not a mental issue. This is a physiological, physical issue that we feel like we might be able to correct.”
So they tried a new approach to diagnose and fix the problem.
Alabama Used Virtual Reality Goggles To Fix Star Wideout
Allen found out about a company that developed virtual reality technology originally designed for elderly patients who suffered traumatic brain injuries to work on their reaction time and coordinated movement.
“Between you and me,” Allen said, “I’d like to keep the name of the company off this.”
He then discovered the same technology could be used for his athletes.
As it turns out, the system also has technology designed to improve vision. The system tests binocular motor control, which involves your eyes working in tandem to track an incoming object.
“And sure enough, we did some tests down there, and the test showed that once the stimulus was right here,” Coleman-Williams told Scarbrough, pointing about an arm’s length away from his face, “only one eye was tracking it.”
The company then created a program for Alabama that uses VR goggles to show an object coming at them at varying speeds. The user then visually tracks the object repeatedly, with the goal of training the eyes to work better together.
Coleman-Williams has not dropped a pass since he began using the program. If Coleman-Williams returns to his superstar-level play, and Alabama competes for a national title, then Allen might just be the most valuable man in the program.