ZeroClub
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True.
David Irving and Rolando McClain were flakes with freak talent. It's sad to see such potential unrealized.
Machota: Cowboys mailbag - DeMarcus Lawrence’s worth, Tony Pollard’s health and kicking situation
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David Irving and Rolando McClain were flakes with freak talent. It's sad to see such potential unrealized.
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Irving still bothers me. That guy was scary good for a few games. Like take over the game on defense good. And the retard smoked it all away.
Genghis Khan
The worst version of myself
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I said at the time that I didn't like Taco and he looked like a bust to me. It was a horrific pick. I think it was obvious he wasn't going to be good.
Then again I did like Hill so I probably got lucky on Taco.
ZeroClub
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I'm there too. Irving could have been an elite player he had dedicated himself to football. He just wasn't so into it.
p1_
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he tried to revive himself with the Raiders, and it seems his mojo was completely gone.
ravidubey
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Is he qualified for that? Anger issues reacting to folks blaming him for not double-bagging and all…
ravidubey
DCC 4Life
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That f’ed up Rodgers throw in the playoffs whe Irving was tripled and held. RAGE
ravidubey
DCC 4Life
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He was at best a 3rd round prospect, except Dallas’s staff had bloody fixated on him and for God know what reason could not stand losing him.
A lot like Sam Williams in that respect.
True having the 1st rounder in Tyler fill an immediate need made the Williams pick more palatable, but the MAJOR difference was the credibility of Quinn vs Marinelli.
Genghis Khan
The worst version of myself
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I couldn't disagree more.
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Yeah, Sam Williams was far less of a head case.
And Quinn didn’t feel he had to sign a contract.
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Yeah Sam Williams in my opinion had first round caliber physical talent, had the production in college and I really felt like the reason he was even projected as low as he was, was due to the sexual assault stuff. He can be a little bit of a hot head who plays out of control too. But there is obvious skill that you never saw with a guy like Hill.
ZeroClub
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'This is his shot to get it right.'
Ole Miss standout Sam Williams has made mistakes. His son is motivation to never make them again.
By MICHAEL KATZ Daily Journal Nov 18, 2021
OXFORD • Each and every time he gazes upon the face of his son, Sam Williams can’t help but think about where he’s been, what he’s been through, what he’s done and where he’s going.
Sam Jr. — or S.J., as his family calls the 1-year-old — is Williams’ chance at something better than he had. And it’s constant motivation to stay the course.
The star Ole Miss defensive end grew up in rural Alabama. He and his siblings were taken from their mother’s custody when he was just 6 or 7 years old. He was raised by his grandmother and then with an aunt. At one point in his life, he lived on the floor of a friend’s living room.
Before his senior year of high school, Williams asked a substitute teacher at his former school if he could move in with her family. That woman, Tiffani Cain, is who Williams now affectionately refers to as “mom.”
“He introduces me as ‘mom,’ but he refers to me as ‘Mrs. Cain,’” Cain notes.
Williams has not had a straightforward path on the football field — he’s a likely high selection in the 2022 NFL Draft pick who only played one full year of high school football because basketball was his love — or off it.
Williams has had missteps. He was expelled from his first high school, and he was suspended from the Ole Miss football program in the summer of 2020 after an arrest for felony sexual battery. While the charges were ultimately dropped, negative perceptions of his character still lingered.
But Williams sees S.J. as proof of how far he has come as a football player and, above all else, as a person.
“Everybody, when they’re young, is going to look up what their name means,” Williams said. “I know the article is going to (come) up about 2020 and everything. But right now I’m focusing on what he sees after that. One day, I’m going to have to break it down. ‘Yeah, your dad got in trouble.’ But he will see, ‘It happened, but my dad overcame that, and my dad never turned back to that and never let it break him down. He got back up.’”
Williams’ growth as a football player and man are forever intertwined, and that is not by happenstance. The steps he took to grow changed his mindset on the field. And because of that, Williams has become one of the most feared defenders in the SEC.
Those close to him believe he has earned his shot at redemption.
“I’m just proud of the guy, and I’m just proud because he’s continuing to fight. He keeps defying the odds,” said Greg Davis, his coach at Northeast Mississippi Community College. “Everybody in this state knows who the hell Sam Williams is.”
*
The first time Williams called Cain “mom” caught her off guard. It wasn’t so much a conversation as it was a casual comment said in passing. But the gravity of it hit Cain all the same.
“We don’t disregard his birth mother at all, or his aunt,” Cain said. “But it makes sense to him right now.”
Williams said he still isn’t entirely sure why he and his siblings were taken from his mother’s custody when he was a boy, though he’s heard “different stories” over the years. He saw her from time to time at holidays, Williams said, and still maintains a relationship with her. His father was completely absent, according to Williams.
Upon being taken from his mother, he lived with his grandparents in Verbena, Alabama, a town of about 3,700 people. (“Dirt roads” and “hay,” were how Williams described it.) He later moved into a three-bedroom home with his aunt, uncle, brother and three sisters, cramming a total of nine or so people into one home.
He attended Marbury High School, a small school in Deatsville, Alabama, that regularly has graduating classes in the hundreds. He was expelled the summer after his junior season.
According to Williams, he was trying football for the first time and was at an off-campus camp in the woods with teammates. One teammate brought a knife, Williams said, and a number of players “played with it.” Everyone who did so was expelled, Williams said.
That left Williams without a school.
Cain, who worked in administration at Lee High School in Montgomery, Alabama, did on-the-side substitute teaching at Marbury. If she remembers correctly, she subbed him in history and science. Cain’s daughter also knew Williams personally, as she was the stat keeper for Marbury basketball.
Williams reached out to Cain, the only person he really knew at nearby Lee. She suggested he try out for the football team at the school, thinking it would be a good way for him to make friends. She also thought he would be good at it.
Lee is an inner-city school about 25 minutes south of Deatsville. It is roughly three times the size of Marbury. He at one point lived on the floor of a friend’s living room with a trash bag full of clothes so he could attend the school, Williams said.
That October, Cain remembers having a conversation with Williams about moving in, though she doesn’t remember who approached whom. It wasn’t really a conversation, either. She just made sure her daughter was OK with it.
“I’ve known Sam … since ninth grade. I’ve known him, and I felt very comfortable in that situation,” Cain said. “There was no, ‘I don’t know.’”
*
Davis, the Northeast coach, vividly remembers seeing a video being passed around his junior college football team. It was one of those 360-degree dunk videos where the dunker gets so high in the air he physically puts his elbow through the rim and hangs off of it.
That wasn’t just any random person on the internet, though. That was Sam Williams.
“I saw him do a couple tomahawk dunks,” Davis said. “He’s special, man.”
Williams’ first love was basketball. That’s what he thought he was going to play. That is, until he started school at Lee.
Realistically, Cain knew that Williams didn’t have the body to play basketball at the next level; 6-foot-4 is pretty run-of-the-mill in that world. But she thought he had potential in football, though he weighed just 215 or so pounds at this point. He had tried out for football previously but always quit after a few days, Cain said.
The first few days of football practice went like they always did for Williams — he hated it. There were ninth-graders weighing more than he did, Williams said, and he was getting pushed around.
“After the second or third day he said, ‘I don’t want to do this,’” Cain recalled with a laugh. “I said, ‘I don’t care.’”
Williams didn’t really know what he was doing for the first week or so, Cain said. But Williams is an elite athlete who eventually figured things out. He was also eating double the amount of lunch at school now in an effort to bulk up.
Lee was home to a number of Division I football players; Henry Ruggs III played on the same team with Williams. Scouts would come to the school looking at other players and come away impressed with the specimen Williams was.
Despite a solid senior campaign, Division I football was an afterthought. Not because he didn’t want to play — he had learned to love football after a time, seeing it was a way for him to better his life — but his grades were not where they needed to be. Academics had never been a priority for him, and this late in high school, it was too late to salvage things completely.
Davis heard about Williams through a friend at a coaching convention. At that point Williams was 6-foot-4 and about 210 pounds, Davis said. But when he saw Williams’ tape, he saw a player that was graceful in a way you cannot teach.
Davis saw a blank canvas.
“We had a need for speed,” Davis said.
Davis remembers talking with a coaching friend at an Ole Miss-run camp. The coach asked Davis what he thought Williams, who was participating in it, was going to run.
Williams was finally filling out, having gained nearly 20 pounds within a month of being on campus at Northeast. (“He was eating three meals a day” Davis said.) Williams had also never seriously lifted weights before coming on campus.
“He never had 315 pounds on his back. He didn’t even know how to count 315 on the bar,” Davis recalled.
At that particular camp, Williams was up to about 250 pounds. Davis nonchalantly said his player would run a sub-4.6 40-yard dash, an impressive number for someone of Williams’ suddenly-thick stature.
Then Williams actually ran.
He ran a 4.38 or 4.39, Williams said, a time most All-Pro NFL wide receivers and cornerbacks can’t match, much less defensive ends. There must have been a problem with the stopwatches, everyone thought. Williams was asked to run again.
“Four-point-four flat,” Davis said with a chuckle. “It was a sight.”
As was the case with Williams in his high school football days, he needed guidance. He needed to be explicitly told and shown what to do. But if you are willing to give Williams the attention he needs, he will repay it tenfold. Davis became a tough-love father figure.
Williams was inconsistent his first season with Northeast, as he was still learning how everything worked. He was also working through personal problems — after finally being shown motherly love from Cain, he was back on his own at Northeast in a cramped dormitory, somewhat reluctant to ask for help.
“Ms. Cain took me out of that, and now I had to go right back in it,” Williams explained.
But during the spring heading into his second year, Davis remembers Williams making a play that made the coach’s jaw drop.
The offense was lined up on the left hashmark of the practice field. Williams ran all the way across the field to make the tackle, a blur masquerading in shoulder pads.
“‘Damn, that dude’s starting to get it,’” Davis recalled telling himself.
Williams ended up having one of the all-time great JUCO seasons in 2018, racking up 17.5 sacks and 28.5 tackles for loss on his way to All-American honors. He wound up at Ole Miss — his last college visit — because the coaches showed care for him as a person, first and foremost.
He got off to a solid, if unspectacular, start to his Ole Miss career. He had six sacks his first year in 2019. He battled bouts of inconsistency, not really shocking for someone with just three full years of football under his belt who had bounced between outside linebacker and defensive end.
*
There are two defining moments for Williams that re-routed his life. One was, of course, the birth of S.J. The other was an incident before the 2020 season that nearly cost him everything.
Williams was suspended from the team in late July, now under first-year head coach Lane Kiffin, after he was charged with felony sexual battery. The charges were eventually dropped, and he returned to the team in September.
Cain stood by his side as things played out.
A records request pertaining to the case was unable to be fulfilled by the Oxford Police Department by deadline for this story.
Despite having his name cleared, it was another knock on Williams. He battled the perception that he had character concerns, and he had to re-earn the trust of those he cared about.
During his suspension, Williams left Oxford. He stayed with Davis, sleeping on his couch. He needed to get away from everything, Cain said. The tough-love advice from Davis was simple: focus on football and count the blessings you have.
“I’ve been really tough on Sam at times,” Davis said. “I’m just that guy that just wants the best out of him and to keep him grounded. And he has so much potential in life. My job is to mentor and develop.
“Sam is a person that has needed help, and it’s taken a lot to get Sam where he is.”
Williams returned to the team for the 2020 season and was productive. But more than that, he saw a golden opportunity. This was his last chance to make things right.
“I just thought different. I just stopped hanging out with people I didn't trust,” Williams said. “It was a bad moment. Even when I got back on the team, I had to like get back into being me.”
After Williams broke the school single-season school sack record in a victory over Liberty — he has 10.5 with two regular season games to go — Williams admitted he had no idea he had made history. But when he was informed of the accolade, it wasn’t special because of statistics. It was important because it was S.J.’s first birthday.
"He's just locked in way more," sophomore defensive end Cedric Johnson said. "Great at watching film for the next opponent, trying to be the best that he can be, go as fast and hard as he can every game, every practice."
Williams is co-parenting with S.J.’s mother, Cain said, and the two are living together. Cain describes Williams as a fun but “hawkish” father. He is always worried about what might be happening with his son. Does he have enough food? Is he clean?
Looking at S.J. is Williams’ way of looking into a mirror.
“Some people say, ‘It ain’t me, it ain’t me.’ But when you realize it is you, and you’re willing to do anything in your power to change, that’s when changes start,” Williams said. “I looked in the mirror, deep in the mirror. Cried. Talked to myself. Prayed.
“It was time for a change because I have a son, and I don’t want him to go through anything I went through.”
Williams is a likely high NFL draft pick. He might very well be an All-American this season and lead the SEC in sacks. But the only reason any of that matters is because it means the future becomes brighter for S.J.
Williams is not perfect. He has made mistakes. But S.J. is his second chance.
“You don’t really understand it until that little person is right there in front of you,” Cain said. “The day after he was born, (Williams) was like, ‘This is the one person in my life I need to make sure is OK.’ This is when you understand you’re a parent. He’s made a promise to himself that he will never put his child in situation that he was in.
“In (his) mind, this is (his) shot to get it right.”
Ole Miss standout Sam Williams has made mistakes. His son is motivation to never make them again.
By MICHAEL KATZ Daily Journal Nov 18, 2021
OXFORD • Each and every time he gazes upon the face of his son, Sam Williams can’t help but think about where he’s been, what he’s been through, what he’s done and where he’s going.
Sam Jr. — or S.J., as his family calls the 1-year-old — is Williams’ chance at something better than he had. And it’s constant motivation to stay the course.
The star Ole Miss defensive end grew up in rural Alabama. He and his siblings were taken from their mother’s custody when he was just 6 or 7 years old. He was raised by his grandmother and then with an aunt. At one point in his life, he lived on the floor of a friend’s living room.
Before his senior year of high school, Williams asked a substitute teacher at his former school if he could move in with her family. That woman, Tiffani Cain, is who Williams now affectionately refers to as “mom.”
“He introduces me as ‘mom,’ but he refers to me as ‘Mrs. Cain,’” Cain notes.
Williams has not had a straightforward path on the football field — he’s a likely high selection in the 2022 NFL Draft pick who only played one full year of high school football because basketball was his love — or off it.
Williams has had missteps. He was expelled from his first high school, and he was suspended from the Ole Miss football program in the summer of 2020 after an arrest for felony sexual battery. While the charges were ultimately dropped, negative perceptions of his character still lingered.
But Williams sees S.J. as proof of how far he has come as a football player and, above all else, as a person.
“Everybody, when they’re young, is going to look up what their name means,” Williams said. “I know the article is going to (come) up about 2020 and everything. But right now I’m focusing on what he sees after that. One day, I’m going to have to break it down. ‘Yeah, your dad got in trouble.’ But he will see, ‘It happened, but my dad overcame that, and my dad never turned back to that and never let it break him down. He got back up.’”
Williams’ growth as a football player and man are forever intertwined, and that is not by happenstance. The steps he took to grow changed his mindset on the field. And because of that, Williams has become one of the most feared defenders in the SEC.
Those close to him believe he has earned his shot at redemption.
“I’m just proud of the guy, and I’m just proud because he’s continuing to fight. He keeps defying the odds,” said Greg Davis, his coach at Northeast Mississippi Community College. “Everybody in this state knows who the hell Sam Williams is.”
*
The first time Williams called Cain “mom” caught her off guard. It wasn’t so much a conversation as it was a casual comment said in passing. But the gravity of it hit Cain all the same.
“We don’t disregard his birth mother at all, or his aunt,” Cain said. “But it makes sense to him right now.”
Williams said he still isn’t entirely sure why he and his siblings were taken from his mother’s custody when he was a boy, though he’s heard “different stories” over the years. He saw her from time to time at holidays, Williams said, and still maintains a relationship with her. His father was completely absent, according to Williams.
Upon being taken from his mother, he lived with his grandparents in Verbena, Alabama, a town of about 3,700 people. (“Dirt roads” and “hay,” were how Williams described it.) He later moved into a three-bedroom home with his aunt, uncle, brother and three sisters, cramming a total of nine or so people into one home.
He attended Marbury High School, a small school in Deatsville, Alabama, that regularly has graduating classes in the hundreds. He was expelled the summer after his junior season.
According to Williams, he was trying football for the first time and was at an off-campus camp in the woods with teammates. One teammate brought a knife, Williams said, and a number of players “played with it.” Everyone who did so was expelled, Williams said.
That left Williams without a school.
Cain, who worked in administration at Lee High School in Montgomery, Alabama, did on-the-side substitute teaching at Marbury. If she remembers correctly, she subbed him in history and science. Cain’s daughter also knew Williams personally, as she was the stat keeper for Marbury basketball.
Williams reached out to Cain, the only person he really knew at nearby Lee. She suggested he try out for the football team at the school, thinking it would be a good way for him to make friends. She also thought he would be good at it.
Lee is an inner-city school about 25 minutes south of Deatsville. It is roughly three times the size of Marbury. He at one point lived on the floor of a friend’s living room with a trash bag full of clothes so he could attend the school, Williams said.
That October, Cain remembers having a conversation with Williams about moving in, though she doesn’t remember who approached whom. It wasn’t really a conversation, either. She just made sure her daughter was OK with it.
“I’ve known Sam … since ninth grade. I’ve known him, and I felt very comfortable in that situation,” Cain said. “There was no, ‘I don’t know.’”
*
Davis, the Northeast coach, vividly remembers seeing a video being passed around his junior college football team. It was one of those 360-degree dunk videos where the dunker gets so high in the air he physically puts his elbow through the rim and hangs off of it.
That wasn’t just any random person on the internet, though. That was Sam Williams.
“I saw him do a couple tomahawk dunks,” Davis said. “He’s special, man.”
Williams’ first love was basketball. That’s what he thought he was going to play. That is, until he started school at Lee.
Realistically, Cain knew that Williams didn’t have the body to play basketball at the next level; 6-foot-4 is pretty run-of-the-mill in that world. But she thought he had potential in football, though he weighed just 215 or so pounds at this point. He had tried out for football previously but always quit after a few days, Cain said.
The first few days of football practice went like they always did for Williams — he hated it. There were ninth-graders weighing more than he did, Williams said, and he was getting pushed around.
“After the second or third day he said, ‘I don’t want to do this,’” Cain recalled with a laugh. “I said, ‘I don’t care.’”
Williams didn’t really know what he was doing for the first week or so, Cain said. But Williams is an elite athlete who eventually figured things out. He was also eating double the amount of lunch at school now in an effort to bulk up.
Lee was home to a number of Division I football players; Henry Ruggs III played on the same team with Williams. Scouts would come to the school looking at other players and come away impressed with the specimen Williams was.
Despite a solid senior campaign, Division I football was an afterthought. Not because he didn’t want to play — he had learned to love football after a time, seeing it was a way for him to better his life — but his grades were not where they needed to be. Academics had never been a priority for him, and this late in high school, it was too late to salvage things completely.
Davis heard about Williams through a friend at a coaching convention. At that point Williams was 6-foot-4 and about 210 pounds, Davis said. But when he saw Williams’ tape, he saw a player that was graceful in a way you cannot teach.
Davis saw a blank canvas.
“We had a need for speed,” Davis said.
Davis remembers talking with a coaching friend at an Ole Miss-run camp. The coach asked Davis what he thought Williams, who was participating in it, was going to run.
Williams was finally filling out, having gained nearly 20 pounds within a month of being on campus at Northeast. (“He was eating three meals a day” Davis said.) Williams had also never seriously lifted weights before coming on campus.
“He never had 315 pounds on his back. He didn’t even know how to count 315 on the bar,” Davis recalled.
At that particular camp, Williams was up to about 250 pounds. Davis nonchalantly said his player would run a sub-4.6 40-yard dash, an impressive number for someone of Williams’ suddenly-thick stature.
Then Williams actually ran.
He ran a 4.38 or 4.39, Williams said, a time most All-Pro NFL wide receivers and cornerbacks can’t match, much less defensive ends. There must have been a problem with the stopwatches, everyone thought. Williams was asked to run again.
“Four-point-four flat,” Davis said with a chuckle. “It was a sight.”
As was the case with Williams in his high school football days, he needed guidance. He needed to be explicitly told and shown what to do. But if you are willing to give Williams the attention he needs, he will repay it tenfold. Davis became a tough-love father figure.
Williams was inconsistent his first season with Northeast, as he was still learning how everything worked. He was also working through personal problems — after finally being shown motherly love from Cain, he was back on his own at Northeast in a cramped dormitory, somewhat reluctant to ask for help.
“Ms. Cain took me out of that, and now I had to go right back in it,” Williams explained.
But during the spring heading into his second year, Davis remembers Williams making a play that made the coach’s jaw drop.
The offense was lined up on the left hashmark of the practice field. Williams ran all the way across the field to make the tackle, a blur masquerading in shoulder pads.
“‘Damn, that dude’s starting to get it,’” Davis recalled telling himself.
Williams ended up having one of the all-time great JUCO seasons in 2018, racking up 17.5 sacks and 28.5 tackles for loss on his way to All-American honors. He wound up at Ole Miss — his last college visit — because the coaches showed care for him as a person, first and foremost.
He got off to a solid, if unspectacular, start to his Ole Miss career. He had six sacks his first year in 2019. He battled bouts of inconsistency, not really shocking for someone with just three full years of football under his belt who had bounced between outside linebacker and defensive end.
*
There are two defining moments for Williams that re-routed his life. One was, of course, the birth of S.J. The other was an incident before the 2020 season that nearly cost him everything.
Williams was suspended from the team in late July, now under first-year head coach Lane Kiffin, after he was charged with felony sexual battery. The charges were eventually dropped, and he returned to the team in September.
Cain stood by his side as things played out.
A records request pertaining to the case was unable to be fulfilled by the Oxford Police Department by deadline for this story.
Despite having his name cleared, it was another knock on Williams. He battled the perception that he had character concerns, and he had to re-earn the trust of those he cared about.
During his suspension, Williams left Oxford. He stayed with Davis, sleeping on his couch. He needed to get away from everything, Cain said. The tough-love advice from Davis was simple: focus on football and count the blessings you have.
“I’ve been really tough on Sam at times,” Davis said. “I’m just that guy that just wants the best out of him and to keep him grounded. And he has so much potential in life. My job is to mentor and develop.
“Sam is a person that has needed help, and it’s taken a lot to get Sam where he is.”
Williams returned to the team for the 2020 season and was productive. But more than that, he saw a golden opportunity. This was his last chance to make things right.
“I just thought different. I just stopped hanging out with people I didn't trust,” Williams said. “It was a bad moment. Even when I got back on the team, I had to like get back into being me.”
After Williams broke the school single-season school sack record in a victory over Liberty — he has 10.5 with two regular season games to go — Williams admitted he had no idea he had made history. But when he was informed of the accolade, it wasn’t special because of statistics. It was important because it was S.J.’s first birthday.
"He's just locked in way more," sophomore defensive end Cedric Johnson said. "Great at watching film for the next opponent, trying to be the best that he can be, go as fast and hard as he can every game, every practice."
Williams is co-parenting with S.J.’s mother, Cain said, and the two are living together. Cain describes Williams as a fun but “hawkish” father. He is always worried about what might be happening with his son. Does he have enough food? Is he clean?
Looking at S.J. is Williams’ way of looking into a mirror.
“Some people say, ‘It ain’t me, it ain’t me.’ But when you realize it is you, and you’re willing to do anything in your power to change, that’s when changes start,” Williams said. “I looked in the mirror, deep in the mirror. Cried. Talked to myself. Prayed.
“It was time for a change because I have a son, and I don’t want him to go through anything I went through.”
Williams is a likely high NFL draft pick. He might very well be an All-American this season and lead the SEC in sacks. But the only reason any of that matters is because it means the future becomes brighter for S.J.
Williams is not perfect. He has made mistakes. But S.J. is his second chance.
“You don’t really understand it until that little person is right there in front of you,” Cain said. “The day after he was born, (Williams) was like, ‘This is the one person in my life I need to make sure is OK.’ This is when you understand you’re a parent. He’s made a promise to himself that he will never put his child in situation that he was in.
“In (his) mind, this is (his) shot to get it right.”
ravidubey
DCC 4Life
- Joined
- Apr 7, 2013
- Messages
- 20,214
Nice article. Williams has family like his son to keep him accountable and it makes a difference.
Point wasmost predicted Hill and Williams to be 3rd rounders, each had off-field reasons for being drafted below their raw talent level, and each was sponsored by a Cowboys defensive coach to be drafted in the 2nd round ahead of where they’d have gone otherwise.
Also in each case, the connection was so strong every media outlet had associated the player with the Cowboys well in advance.
When we drafted each, everyone knew it was a reach, but Quinn’s credibility made a huge difference vs Marinelli’s. Marinelli came up with that whole ‘contract’ nonsense and everyone rolled their eyes the moment we heard about it.
With Williams at the time no fans knew the real off-field story, but we trusted Quinn did.
Point wasmost predicted Hill and Williams to be 3rd rounders, each had off-field reasons for being drafted below their raw talent level, and each was sponsored by a Cowboys defensive coach to be drafted in the 2nd round ahead of where they’d have gone otherwise.
Also in each case, the connection was so strong every media outlet had associated the player with the Cowboys well in advance.
When we drafted each, everyone knew it was a reach, but Quinn’s credibility made a huge difference vs Marinelli’s. Marinelli came up with that whole ‘contract’ nonsense and everyone rolled their eyes the moment we heard about it.
With Williams at the time no fans knew the real off-field story, but we trusted Quinn did.
ZeroClub
UFA
- Joined
- Jun 17, 2021
- Messages
- 1,102
I don't know the details of the 2020 sexual battery charge or his December 2022 Corvette wreck, but I have compassion for what Williams went through as a child.
The transition to life in DFW as a high-profile professional athlete has got to be remarkable for him. It's a much faster lane than what he's seen before. Northeast Mississippi Community College is in a town of less than 10,000. Oxford, MS, home of Ole Miss, is about 25,000.
The transition to life in DFW as a high-profile professional athlete has got to be remarkable for him. It's a much faster lane than what he's seen before. Northeast Mississippi Community College is in a town of less than 10,000. Oxford, MS, home of Ole Miss, is about 25,000.
Simpleton
DCC 4Life
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- Apr 8, 2013
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- 17,510
Williams was always way more talented, he was second in the SEC in sacks his last year in college behind Will Anderson Jr.
ravidubey
DCC 4Life
- Joined
- Apr 7, 2013
- Messages
- 20,214
Quinn spent a ton of time with him predraft as well, more than anyone since he’s been in Dallas from what I can tell
ZeroClub
UFA
- Joined
- Jun 17, 2021
- Messages
- 1,102
Quinn knows talent and football players, but he's not a psychologist. We know that the team investigated the heck out of the sexual battery charge before the draft. Jerry said so publicly. I wonder what other workups (e.g., psychological testing) the team did on Williams before drafting him.
Chocolate Lab
Mere Commoner
- Joined
- Oct 2, 2014
- Messages
- 20,192
I'll be the outlier I guess, but I'm not sold on Quinn as personnel guru. I think Williams' talent is easy for anyone to see -- the only question was the character risk.
I'm still salty about Bossman and especially his super pet cat Giraffe Wright who everyone said was way overdrafted and now can't play. If not for Bland saving the day we'd be in an almost disastrous corner situation because of those two busts.
I'm still salty about Bossman and especially his super pet cat Giraffe Wright who everyone said was way overdrafted and now can't play. If not for Bland saving the day we'd be in an almost disastrous corner situation because of those two busts.
- Joined
- Apr 7, 2013
- Messages
- 19,555
Somebody woke up on the wrong side of the bed.
Wasn't this a criticism of his in Atlanta?
Chocolate Lab
Mere Commoner
- Joined
- Oct 2, 2014
- Messages
- 20,192
