Josh Williams earned a CB2 chance vs the Raiders
The 3rd year CB showed off the traits that make him the obvious choice to help shore up the Chiefs' issues at CB, despite his flaws.
It’s no secret that the Chiefs have had a problem at the second cornerback position since losing Jaylen Watson to injury. It’s also no secret that Josh Williams has not been the Chiefs’ first choice to solve that problem..
It’s pretty obvious based on how playing time has evolved. The third-year corner started the season as CB3, playing behind Trent McDuffie and Watson with 40% of the snaps in Week 1 against the Ravens. Following that, however, Williams was essentially benched, playing only 6 snaps on defense in Week 2 and zero snaps on defense for the next three weeks. He played 12 snaps against the 49ers, but that was mostly because Watson was injured midgame. He played significant snaps against the Raiders and Bucs only AFTER Nazeeh Johnson was hurt… and promptly lost those snaps once Johnson was healthy.
In the meantime, Johnson was given the opportunity to leapfrog Williams. He was essentially given the CB3 snaps over Williams prior to Watson’s injury, and was then thrust into the role of CB2 over the last month after missing a little time (he was hurt during the first Raiders game and missed the Bucs game entirely). It should be noted, for reasons that will become obvious in a moment, that Spags also tried utilizing rookie Christian Roland-Wallace in the slot as well as a myriad of safeties in order to help limit CB snaps overall while Johnson was hurt.
In other words, multiple CBs (and even different roles for safeties) have been tried to fill the snap count without using Williams. And it hasn’t worked, with the coverage looking increasingly leaky and opposing teams clearly going after Johnson at times. This all came to a head against the Raiders Friday, as Johnson was pulled mid-drive after a tough series. Keith Taylor finished that drive at CB, and after that Williams was in at CB2.
To sum up, Spags has tried basically everything he can to keep from going back to Williams, and was forced to get the veteran back on the field in a major role against Vegas.
(Williams is at the bottom of the screen in man coverage below)
Williams ended up playing basically every snap after coming in for Johnson, and for the first time in weeks had a chance to show he could handle Spags’ defense. I went back and reviewed his snaps, and I think it’s time to talk about how the most obvious candidate to help assuage (though not fully heal) the Chiefs’ issues at CB2 is a guy who is in-house and a good fit for some of what Spags likes to do most.
Let’s talk about Josh Williams’ film vs the Raiders and how he generally made the most out of his opportunity to show he’s the right guy for the job.