Joshua Williams Makes his Case to Return to a Starting Role

Josh Williams man coverage ability and athleticism is too enticing for the Chiefs to keep on the bench going forward.

Joshua Williams entered the season as a starting - or at least rotational - cornerback along with Jaylen Watson to play across from Trent McDuffie. After a long off-season of competition over who would be the Chiefs’ CB2 and CB3, it looked like the Chiefs had settled on Watson and Williams fulfilling those roles respectively. Then Week 1 happened and Williams had some communication and assignment integrity issues occur and immediately fell out of favor. Williams went from playing 40% of the snaps in Week 1 to being a healthy inactive from Week 3 to Week 5.

The following game, Jaylen Watson suffered a season ending injury but the Chiefs immediately turned to Nazeeh Johnson - who had already been playing over Williams leading up to this game. Johnson then suffers and injury causing him to miss a game and half, Williams returns to a starting role for that small sample before once again relinquishing that spot back to Nazeeh Johnson when he returned.

At that point, it looked clear the Chiefs wanted to run with Nazeeh Johnson and Trent McDuffie as their two primary corners but that could only last so long. Since the Watson injury, no CB had really given the Chiefs anything near his level of play. Johnson had struggled since his return from injury and shortly in this past week’s game against the Raiders, the Chiefs wanted to go a different direction.

Enter Joshua Williams… again. Williams took over the starting CB2 role on the Chiefs third defensive series of the game and never looked back. It was a big moment not just for Williams as he worked his way back into the starting lineup but also the Chiefs who had been struggling to get a foothold on the position.

Joshua Williams Film Review

Generally speaking, Williams had been solid statistically this season only giving up 7 receptions on 13 targets and one Touchdown. The physical ability to cover receivers has never been the issue for Williams, it’s always been more about consistency and reliability for the coaching staff. Both of these things were on display for Williams in the most recent Raiders matchup but a solution may have become quite clear in the process.

Physical One-on-One Coverage

This is Williams bread and butter. Whether it’s going to be man coverage isolated on the boundary, a reduced split crossing route, or even carrying a vertical route through zone coverage Williams does an excellent job using his size as a weapon. He can disrupt receivers at the line of scrimmage or throughout their route stem throwing off the timing of a route, as seen on the second play above.