NYT Marcus Williams article

Talented Pass Catcher Plays Defense for Jets

By BEN SHPIGEL
SEPT. 20, 2015

FLORHAM PARK, N.J. — Four of the five starters on the 2008-9 Hopkins High School boys’ basketball team, that season’s Minnesota state champion, received Division I scholarships. The exception was the 5-foot-11 point guard, who shot a little, passed a lot and relished his responsibility as a defensive stopper.

He would deny the ball. He would harass his man. He would frustrate offenses.

That guard, Marcus Williams, now plays in the N.F.L., where he has the same duties. He approaches his job, as a cornerback on the Jets, as if he were still playing on hardwood.

When he covers a receiver, he imagines himself defending a player on the court, something that his teammate Darrelle Revis, a former high school basketball star, also does. Williams slides his feet along with the receiver, mirroring his motions, trying to stay square. The biggest difference, he said, is that he can now use his hands — within the first 5 yards, at least — without being penalized.

“It’s like basketball, but cheating, basically,” Williams said.

Williams used that technique to great success in last week’s season opener against Cleveland. Shadowing Brian Hartline along the far sideline just after halftime, Williams had the awareness to swivel in time to grab an errant pass, and his interception led to a touchdown that was crucial to the Jets’ 31-10 victory.

Even after the starting cornerback Antonio Cromartie exited with a sprained left knee, the Jets’ coaches felt comfortable deploying a cover-zero defense on the play — no safety help behind the cornerbacks — because of their faith in Williams.

“Depending on what you’re seeing, sometimes you don’t have to teach certain corners,” Revis said. “He comes in like it’s nothing and does his job.”

Williams earned the coaches’ confidence during the off-season, when he practiced with such intensity that they wondered if he was merely trying to impress them. Weeks went by, and if anything, said his position coach, Daylon McCutcheon, Williams’s effort increased.

In training camp, Williams finished second to Revis among defensive backs in a statistic called ball disruptions: pass breakups, interceptions, forced fumbles and fumble recoveries. Every day, Williams would glance at the chart hanging in the secondary’s meeting room to see where he ranked — whether he had expanded his lead or lagged behind.

“He wanted it,” said McCutcheon, the assistant coach for defensive backs. “He really, really wanted it.”

Those words also explain how Williams, 24, reached this stage of his nascent N.F.L. career. Coming out of high school, he had no football scholarship offers, and Williams surmises that his grades played a role. Coming out of college, at the Football Championship Subdivision power North Dakota State, he was not invited to the scouting combine.

At this time a year ago, Williams was not even on an active roster, spending his final week on the Houston Texans’ practice squad before being released. The Jets spent $127 million to upgrade their secondary, signing Revis, Cromartie and Buster Skrine, but Williams secured a spot anyway. He is now one of Coach Todd Bowles’s favorite players.

After the Jets’ new staff took over in January, McCutcheon started reviewing game film of Williams, who had been promoted from the Jets’ practice squad five days before making his debut in a Week 9 loss at Kansas City. McCutcheon noticed that Williams, who started in the Jets’ final eight games in 2014 after winning a competition held by Coach Rex Ryan to determine playing time, tended not to make the sort of mistakes that rookies often made.

He did not rely on his hands. He did not commit any pass-interference penalties, despite playing 88 percent of the team’s defensive snaps and covering receivers like Rob Gronkowski and Antonio Brown.

“Rookies usually really struggle, man,” McCutcheon said. “They’re getting attacked, getting the ball thrown at him. But he was able to make a lot of plays. He was just poised — very, very poised.”

Williams’s ascent began in Fargo, N.D. He spent his first season at North Dakota State gaining academic eligibility. He left, nearly five years later, as a three-time all-American, a three-time all-conference player and the program’s career leader in interceptions.

Along the way, Chris Klieman, Williams’s position coach for one season at North Dakota State and his defensive coordinator for two, learned two things about Williams — both of which still apply, Jets coaches said. Klieman said Williams had developed an uncanny ability to transfer what he learned in film study onto the field. He would watch video all week to discern receivers’ tendencies and then match them stride for stride on Saturday, as he did in his redshirt sophomore season in a game at Southern Illinois. On that day, Klieman said, Williams “ran the route for the wide receiver” on both of his interceptions.

Williams’s ability to catch those passes, instead of dropping or merely deflecting them, demonstrated what Klieman characterized as “wonderful hands.” Unlike many defensive backs, who catch balls with their bodies, Williams emulates a receiver and tries to grab them at the highest point, with his hands extended.

“He has the best ball skills of anyone I’ve ever been around,” Klieman, now the head coach at North Dakota State, said in a telephone interview.

To further enhance those skills, Williams plants himself in front of the passing machine next to the Jets’ practice fields. He works on snaring balls at odd angles, preparing for throws he might encounter during games.

“I’m not going to let a ball come and bat it down,” Williams said. “I want to be the one to take it away. That’s what I pride myself on.”

That preparation helped him against Cleveland, and the next day, too.

When the Jets gathered to review the film in the theater-style auditorium at their practice complex, Bowles announced the five players whose performances merited game balls.

Williams, sitting toward the top, saw the throw from Bowles coming his way. He stuck out his hands. He caught it.

 

I'd like to see him put it together for a string of games, hopefully he gets a chance to do so. The Colts will be a nice test.

I didn't get a chance to track him for the Browns game yet, but I'd like to see how physical he can be at the line.