Quinnen Williams flashes dominance in New York Jets’ loss to San Francisco (Film)

At long last, Quinnen Williams showcased the full extent of his unique talent, pitching a tent in San Francisco's backfield against both the run and the pass. Quinnen Williams' rookie season with the Jets was respectable, but it was far from the dominant rampage that most expected when the Jets took him with the third overall pick. Though he was solid against the run, his largely mediocre pass-rushing left a lot to be desired. However, Williams quietly finished the 2019 season playing some improved football, flashing his elite talent on a more consistent basis even if the stat-sheet did not quite show it. Based on the progress he showed on film near the end of his rookie year, I felt confident about Williams bringing everything together for a Year 2 breakout. The season opener in Buffalo was not a great start on the road to reaching stardom, as Williams went without a pressure outside of a quarterback hit that drew a roughing the passer penalty. Williams turned everything around in the blink of an eye. He was unstoppable against the 49ers in Week 2, enjoying the best game of his career as he looked exactly like the game-wrecking force the Jets hoped they were getting. With two sacks (both of them legitimate) and three tackles for loss against the run, Williams led the NFL with five stops behind the line of scrimmage in Week 2. Through two weeks, no other player has had a game with more than three such stops. Let's dig into the film behind what the peak version of Quinnen Williams looks like. Run game Williams was a good run defender in 2019, but he has the potential to be one of the league's most destructive interior defensive linemen in that phase. The San Francisco game was a glimpse into that potential. One of Williams' best traits against the run is his range. While there are some skills from his Alabama days that he has yet to fully translate, this is one that he has brought to the table for the Jets since day one. With the combination of a great motor and excellent change-of-direction speed for a man his size, Williams is able to make plays from sideline-to-sideline that few other interior defensive linemen can. The 49ers run a counter play here. As the 3-technique, Williams sheds the down block from stud left tackle Trent Williams with a hump move (using the lineman's momentum against him by planting and throwing him by the shoulder toward the direction he is sliding). He quickly recognizes the counter action, not being fooled by the misdirection at all, and chases down Raheem Mostert to combine with Marcus Maye on the tackle for a three-yard loss. Strong shed, good recognition, quick burst, and a powerful finish. Excellent range on display there from the 303-pound Williams. Great play by Maye as well, remaining disciplined on the edge. As the 1-technique here, Williams crashes down and catches the right guard with his feet crossed, blasting him in the chest with tight, accurate hands and then bringing his arm over to easily break through. Jordan Jenkins does a good job setting the edge to force Mostert upfield, and Williams flies in to team up with Jenkins on the tackle for a two-yard loss. Williams is the play side 3-tech here. He violently explodes off the ball, stays very low, and attacks into the chest with tight hands to generate a ton of penetration. Williams reads the action and maintains leverage to the outside while still pushing into the backfield, then sheds to make the tackle for a two-yard loss. Good timing on the shed and an accurate pursuit to the ball, as Williams meets Tevin Coleman head-on as soon as he cuts upfield. With Jenkins getting pinned inside and Alec Ogletree clearly overpursuing, that could have been a big run if Williams did not dominate the rep. Williams again shows off his range on this play, coming from the back side B-gap to make a stop in the play side A-gap. As the 1-technique, Williams shoots for the outside shoulder of the left guard (back side B-gap) while the 49ers run in the opposite direction. Williams gets good leverage on the guard's outer half and creates a ton of penetration while scraping down the line. He keeps himself extended from the guard to maintain the ability to shed. Williams rides the guard's lateral momentum across the line of scrimmage and then sheds to bring down Coleman for a one-yard gain. Pass-rushing Run defense is definitely important, but in a league where teams are throwing more passes each year and continuously becoming more efficient at doing so, pass-rushing is the far superior trait in a front-seven player. Whether Williams can become a stud in this facet of the game is what will dictate whether he becomes a very good player or a superstar. Williams came out of Alabama with incredible upside as a pass-rusher. He coupled his blend of strength and athleticism with a versatile repertoire of moves, showcasing the complete package of necessary tools to become a Fletcher Cox or Geno Atkins type of force in the passing game. In 2019, Williams had a good number of moments in which he created quality pressure with sheer power, but he had a lot of trouble translating the finesse and technical aspects of his game to the NFL, which is the primary reason his production in that phase was lackluster. Throughout the latter portion of 2019, Williams showed gradual improvement with his ability to win one-on-one matchups through methods other than mere power. That progress all came together this past Sunday, as Williams enjoyed his first dominant pass-rushing performance as a Jet. Against the 49ers, Williams picked up the first two legitimate sacks of his career (he had two unblocked sacks and a cleanup half-sack in 2019) while flashing all of the traits that give him the potential to become a star in this area. He overwhelmed with raw strength, chained moves together to win with finesse, and most importantly, finished plays off. This is the guy that the Jets need to see on a weekly basis. As the 4i-technique here, Williams engages Laken Tomlinson, the left guard. Tomlinson comes in with his hands very wide, and Williams punishes him for it. Williams gets his inside arm into Tomlinson's chest. He uses his outside arm to chop down Tomlinson's outside arm, and simultaneously pulls Tomlinson down with his inside arm. Clean victory. Williams swims his inside arm over to clear Tomlinson. He stumbles a bit, but maintains his balance enough to bring down Jimmy Garoppolo by his back leg. That's the stuff Williams was missing last year. He has always had those weapons in him, he just did not have the feel for when to use them during his rookie season. Here, Williams pulled out the right tools to win in that situation, which may have been the result of a smart pre-snap plan based on film study or just pure instinct. Either way, if Williams can begin timing his move selection that effectively on a consistent basis, he will be great. Williams' second sack showcased improvement in another area I thought he needed to take a step up this year: snap timing. He rarely managed to get perfectly-timed jumps off the ball in 2019. Here, he does just that, and it results in a complete dismantling of the San Francisco offense. As the 4i-tech inside of the left tackle (Trent Williams), Quinnen times the snap tremendously, firing off the line about a full tenth of a second before Trent. That sliver of time makes all the difference. With an explosive and well-timed jump, Quinnen blasts through the B-gap and into the backfield, using his outside arm to rip underneath Trent's reach block. Inside, Steve McLendon destroys the left guard, who is knocked into the pulling right guard, creating a mass of humanity. Quinnen stays balanced and pinballs his way through the traffic for a strip-sack on Nick Mullens (recovered by the 49ers). The impeccable snap timing by Quinnen is what gets everything going there. Say that Trent beat Quinnen off the ball by a tenth of a second instead of vice versa. What most likely happens is that Quinnen gets shoved across the line and straight into McLendon, halting McLendon's rush and giving Mullens a pristine pocket to operate from. I already used this adjective to describe the above play, but I'm going to use it again. Explosive rep - and against an elite left tackle, too. Going back to Williams' finesse game, there were some other nice flashes of great technique throughout the afternoon even if they did not yield tangible results. As the 4i-tech here, Williams rushes against the left guard. He sells inside and then raises his shoulders to dodge the guard's one-hand punch with the inside arm. Williams throws a swipe with his outside arm that misses, but it gets the guard off-balance and out in front. After missing the swipe, Williams uses the same arm to grab the guard by his chest and pull him forward. He then swims over for a clean win that leaves the guard in the dust. The center helps out to thwart Williams' rush, but that leaves plenty of room for John Franklin-Myers to rush through the other A-gap for a hit on Garoppolo. Not only is that an impressive rep by Williams on tape, but he gets a nice little off-the-stat-sheet assist for Franklin-Myers' hit. It's a perfect example of how demanding attention can open up opportunities for teammates. Conclusions This was a fantastic performance by Williams, but I want to make something clear as you keep an eye on his path to stardom - the statistical evidence to back up his impact is not always going to be there. Williams is not going to get two sacks every week nor is he going to get three run stuffs every week, because nobody does those things. Why? Football is a circumstanial game. Sometimes a defender dominates his rush rep and get rewarded for a sack, but that's extremely rare. Usually, the positive value of a good rep is enforced in an untracked way, such as a hurried throw, the quarterback scrambling into another teammate who cleans up the sack, or drawing a double that creates room for a teammate. Over hundreds upon hundreds of snaps each season, the league's absolute best defensive linemen usually pick up around 10 tackles for loss agianst the run and 10 sacks. That's slightly more than one big play per game and generally somewhere from 2-3% of the player's defensive snap total. Every time a defender has a good rep, it makes a positive impact on his team in some way. It is just rare that he gets statistical credit for his effort. By the nature of the game, a countless number of things have to break a defender's way on a given play for him to get the chance to do something big such as sack the quarterback or make a tackle in the backfield. Williams was lucky enough to have the stars align for a couple of sacks against the 49ers. But what if that didn't happen? What if Williams did the same exact things on both of those sacks, but Garoppolo and Mullens threw the ball away instead of going down? Would we be talking about Williams as glowingly as we are? Williams has zero control over those factors, yet they play a major role in the narratives surrounding the quality of his performance. Here's the bottom line. Do not get down on Williams if he goes three, four, or five weeks without a sack. Do not get down on him if he has a game with zero tackles. Those things do not sum up what he is doing on the field. Keep an eye on what he is doing from a snap-to-snap basis and analyze how he is affecting the game beyond what the box score says. If Williams executes as consistently as he did against San Francisco, the flashy production should come over the course of a season. He will most likely get his 8-to-10 sacks and elite run-stuffing numbers if he is as legitimately improved as he looked against San Francisco. That's not guaranteed, though. For example, in 2019, Tampa Bay's Vita Vea and Philadelphia's Fletcher Cox were elite defensive tackles, each ranking top-seven among interior linemen in pressures and placing among the highest-graded run defenders at their position. However, if you looked at the box scores, you would have no idea. Vea posted 2.5 sacks and four tackles for loss while Cox posted three sacks and five tackles for loss. Pedestrian numbers for outstanding players. Williams is on the right track, and it's great that he got the flashy production against San Francisco to back up his improved performance, but simple stats are not what will tell us whether he is fulfilling his potential. It comes down to impact - pressure, penetration, and demanding attention. He hit all three marks against the 49ers.