Kansas City’s third-year cornerback hyped up a popular head coaching candidate this week.
As the Kansas City Chiefs wait out the NFL’s Wild Card Weekend to find out who they will face in the playoffs’ second round, there has been some news surrounding the team’s coaching staff.
On Wednesday, we learned that the New York Jets and AFC West rival Las Vegas Raiders have requested to interview Chiefs defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo for their vacant head coaching positions. The Jacksonville Jaguars also announced interest in Spagnuolo on Thursday.
On Wednesday’s episode of the Up and Adams Show on FANDUEL TV, cornerback Joshua Williams offered some insight as to why Spagnuolo might be so coveted.
“I think every morning, Spags has new stuff,” Williams explained. “He would be a great general – no funny stuff. He is really just a wonder. He can come up with all these different types of pressures [and] all these different types of zone drops. All of that is just stuff to kind of confuse the quarterback. A lot of times, guys get in a defense and they kind of do the same thing year in, year out. That’s good because you still get to perfect what you’re doing.
“But in this system, I think one of the benefits for us is you have different guys doing different things all the time. We have corners who blitz. We have corners who drop to a half. We have corners playing man-to-man. We have corners playing off man [and] off zone. There’s so many different types of defense we run, and I feel like that’s one of the benefits that Coach Spags brings.”
Williams benefited from Spagnuolo’s creativity during the Chiefs’ Week 16 victory over the Houston Texans. Down 27-19 (the game’s eventual final score), the Texans faced third-and-11 from their own 25 late in the fourth quarter. Williams dropped quarterback CJ Stroud for a 12-yard sack on a perfectly timed blitz.
The Texans would subsequently punt — and did not see another possession.
“This was the last drive they ended up going out,” Williams recalled. “The Texans were having a good game. I believe originally I knew I was going on a blitz. When I walked by, the safety already gave me the call. I knew I was going. Really, the only hard part for me was trying to hide the blitz – disguise it so the tackle didn’t pick me up and the [running] back didn’t come across.
“Once I felt like I timed up the snap perfectly – and nobody rotated over – it was just finishing a layup from there. Shout out to Spags for dialing it up. He’s always bringing the pressure and calling up the heat. He got me a nice little sack, and we ended the game right there on defense.”
Of course, Spagnuolo’s brilliantly designed plays mean nothing without the players executing on the field. Williams took the opportunity to praise safety Justin Reid’s presence in helping the vision come through and raising the performance of the younger players around him.
“You talk about his physical attributes,” he said of his teammate. “Even his mental capacity – Stanford guy, real smart. I don’t want to gas him up too much, he might think he’s smarter than me. He really is like a second coach on the defense. Along with just the motivation he brings…at the same time, he relates with the players. He relates with the younger guys. You have him and Jaden Hicks getting time in after practice.
“Him and [Bryan Cook] are always cooking stuff up and just making sure they’re on the same page. He’s the biggest glue guy, but not just a glue guy. He goes in and contributes. He gets the defense together and goes out and makes plays…We’ve got so many pieces around him. I feel like that’s why a lot of things have been going right for this defense in the late half of the season.”
Williams recalled possibly his biggest playoff performance as the Chiefs prepare to begin their playoff journey that hopefully ends as the NFL’s first “three-peat” Super Bowl champion. In the 2022 AFC Championship game against the Cincinnati Bengals, during his rookie season, starting cornerback L’Jarius Sneed left the game with a concussion in the first quarter. With fellow rookie cornerbacks Trent McDuffie and Jaylen Watson already in the starting lineup, Williams was unexpectedly forced into action against one of the league’s most prolific passing offenses.
Williams rose to the occasion as the Chiefs won 23-20, even grabbing a key interception after fellow rookie Cook tipped a pass up.
“It was cold out, and I think Sneed had gotten hurt the second drive of the game,” he remarked of the game. “The whole game, I just knew, I was like ‘I’m going to have to play a lot today.’ The second drive comes, and he gets injured, and I come in. At one point…it was me, Trent, Jaylen Watson, and Bryan Cook. The only vet in the secondary was Justin Reid because Juan Thornhill had gotten hurt.
“So we’re out there, and the coaches all through the game are trying to make sure we’re locked in. I honestly feel like as a unit, that was the best game we played. Trent had some PBUs. B-Cook had a PBU to tip it up to me and I got the pick. Jaylen Watson got a pick. When I look back on my rookie year, that’s probably one of the most impactful games. I feel like that’s where I grew the most, especially going into that Super Bowl.”