Is he? I see Patterson as the change of pace/ third down back, and that's kind of the role he had last year. Do you think he gets more than half of the carries? More than the 153 he got last year?
I'd say yes because of the versatility he gives to the offense. And he's actually shown himself to be a pretty good RB. Certainly he's not traditional, but you could see how much better he was than Davis pretty quickly.
I don't think they see Williams in that role at all - he's 30, coming off a 40 carry season, didn't play in 2020, and his high water marks for carries before that were 111 and 50. They might mix Williams in more often if Allgeier isn't very good, but I don't see him as much more than a 5 touch a week guy.
Williams is a veteran stop gap for sure. But he opted out of 2020 because of COVID and there was an established young starter in CHI last year. He's not much more than capable.
One of the biggest mistakes I think that gets made this time of year is projecting Day 3 RB's to be solid FF options their rookie year. Let's look at success stories over the past few years of Day 3 rookie RB's.
Michael Carter (4th -2021): 147/639/4 - 36/325/0
Rhamondre Stevenson (4th - 2021): 133/606/5 - 14/123/0
Kenneth Gainwell (5th - 2021): 68/291/5 - 33/253/1
Elijah Mitchell (6th - 2021): 207/963/5 - 19/137/1
Khalil Herbert (6th - 2021): 103/433/2 - 14/96/0
Joshua Kelley (4th - 2020): 111/354/2 - 23/148/0
Benny Snell (4th - 2019):108/426/2 - 3/23/0
Tony Pollard (4th - 2019): 86/455/2 - 15/107/1
Nyheim Hines (4th - 2018): 85/314/2 - 63/425/2
Tarik Cohen (4th - 2017): 87/370/2 - 53/353/1
...and on and on. The most successful on this list is Mitchell and I'd argue the attribution of that to being a Shanahan family special in the mold of Terrell Davis, Olandis Gary, Mike Anderson et al, whose system unearths the type of later round talents regularly.
Probably the most recent success story of a Day 3 RB is that of Jordan Howard who in 2016 RBBC'ing with Matt Forte went 252/1313/6 - 29/298/1.
Point I'm making is that even with that 'success' list above, the list of who didn't do squat is much larger. These guys last to Day 3 for a reason. It isn't that there isn't talent there, it's just that more the most part, their skillset is limited enough to where the best they can really contribute is in that of a very specific role.