The start of Joshua Williams’ NFL career has seen him immediately matched up with some of the top receivers in the league. The former Fayetteville State standout experienced his “Welcome to the NFL” moment on Sunday against the high-powered offense of the Buffalo Bills.
Chiefs DC Steve Spagnuolo was tasked with getting Williams ready for his first big opportunity, where he played 75% of the defensive snaps against the Bills. He defended and praised the rookie cornerback’s performance in last Sunday’s loss while speaking with reporters on Thursday.
“I’ll tell you what; I think he’s just done this (upward motion). He’s one of the guys, Dave (Merritt) and I say all the time, that he tries to do it exactly the way you coach it, and he’s been doing that since he got here and just gets better and better,” said Spagnuolo. “He just dusts off and moves forward. I thought he did that during the game. I expect him to do it going into this game. And you’re right – but he had to expect that there were going to be a couple of plays in there that weren’t going to go exactly the way we wanted, but we live through the growing pains and hopefully going forward, that helps us.”
Williams played extended minutes due to Rashad Fenton and Trent McDuffie’s injury absences. The fourth-round pick in this past April’s NFL draft continues to learn on the fly, but the trial by fire didn’t go too well during last Sunday’s loss to Buffalo.
“There are times when we say, we’re just going to have to bring people (blitz) and we’re going to have to cover,” said Spagnuolo “That happened a couple of times in this past game. On the first touchdown on Josh (Williams), I thought he was in great shape. He just turned (one direction) when he should have (turned the other). If he makes that play we’re all pretty fired up. That’s the margin of error in this game.”
Josh Allen finished with three touchdown passes, with two notable throws in Williams’ direction. The Bills aimed to attack the rookie’s side, with Gabe Davis and Stefon Diggs getting the best of him on both occasions.
“He was in great position on the first one, the other was a perfect throw and catch to (Stefon Diggs), I’m not sure who could defend that,” said Spagnuolo. “But what you can take away is that he was stride for stride, he was in step, if he just turns a different way it can be a different outcome. It’d be a lot different if somebody just blew by him or he couldn’t do his work at the line of scrimmage or he was getting beat. But I didn’t see that happen, so to us, that’s a positive.”
This week could see the return of Trent McDuffie to help fortify the secondary, but they’ll still just be an injury away from Williams playing significant minutes. Ultimately, Spagnuolo believes this will be a valuable learning experience for the rookie that he can use to help him improve moving forward.
