Coming into his second season for the Kansas City Chiefs, cornerback Joshua Williams had about as good of a rookie campaign as anyone could have expected. Given his reasonable start, expectations should grow considerably for Williams as he steps into competition for a greater role in 2023.
It was possible, of course, for Williams to shock everyone as a ready-made starter for the Chiefs defense coming straight from the DII ranks out of Fayetteville State. The Chiefs have employed multiple rookies in the secondary over the last few years including L'Jarius Sneed or Juan Thornhill or Jaylen Watson, but it was unrealistic to expect such a move.
Instead of letting that cast a shadow over Williams, Chiefs coaches (and fans) should be excited to know that the 23-year-old corner earned playing time in every single game in 2022—17 regular season contests and another 3 in the postseason. He even started four games and played in as many as 100 percent of the defensive snaps in a game.
While the rate of usage ebbed and flowed throughout the year, Williams even played 89 percent of all snaps against the Bengals in the conference championship—a sign of the trust he'd earned over the course of the season. By season's end, he'd deflected 7 passes, intercepted 1, and had 40 tackles. He put up another 9 tackles and 1 inteception in the team's Super Bowl run.
All of this experience is vital for providing a strong foundation of lessons learned for Williams as he moves ahead into competition for a boundary corner role in Steve Spagnuolo's defense. The Chiefs have plenty of competition and youth, but Williams is the x-factor here, a player with a real chance to elevate the overall play by blossoming into the dominant, versatile corner he was—the one with shutdown swagger as a man among boys in Division II.
Remember, the only real knock on Williams as a draft prospect was his level of experience. While scouts could nitpick this and that, the film showed a player who could keep up with any receiver, mirror most movements, and could sit on most routes. And those measurables came out impressive even in NFL circles with incredible length and good athleticism.
Joshua Williams is a CB prospect in the 2022 draft class. He scored a 9.41 RAS out of a possible 10.00. This ranked 115 out of 1923 CB from 1987 to 2022. https://t.co/vWE7vcWVGY #RAS pic.twitter.com/KZ3hn941ew
— Kent Lee Platte (@MathBomb) April 1, 2022
At the present time, it makes the most sense to project a starting trio of Jaylen Watson and Trent McDuffie outside while sitting Sneed in the slot role (or flipping the latter two). And that in itself is a nice young core to rely on once again. However, Williams is that variable for his ability to shelve Watson, to step up and protect outside with his natural talent and length.
Williams' development is also vital to the long-term commitments in the secondary. L'Jarius Sneed is hitting free agency in 2024, and he's been the subject of contract extensiion rumors. But those prices are going to be expensive for the Chiefs to match on the open market, and it's possible they could let him walk for a compensatory pick. If Williams was ready for a starting role, it would even give Brett Veach plenty of leverage heading into negotiations.
Draft history is littered with flyers that made it and others who didn't. Being dominant at one level can mean nothing at the next, and making the leap from a few levels down only makes the jump that much more unlikely. But the fact that Williams more than held his own in his first season in the NFL means great things for the moment he's able to see the game slow down, which would allow his instincts to take over.
If Williams becomes WR2 in 2023, the Chiefs have arguably the best young cornerback corps in the game with Chamarri Conner and Nic Jones waiting in the wings with others to provide further depth.