Undrafted Rookie Marcus Williams Developing as Starting CB for NY Jets

"Cornerback for the New York Jets" has been about as steady a job title as a retail worker during the holiday season, but the constant turnover in the secondary has allowed the Jets to get a real good—often, too good—look at all the cornerbacks on their depth chart. 

One of the players who has finally been able to show some real promise starting at cornerback is former undrafted free agent Marcus Williams, fresh out of the factory at North Dakota State. 

Originally cut from the Houston Texans in training camp, Williams was a midseason addition to the Jets as they cycled through cornerbacks on a weekly basis. When thrown into the starting lineup against the Kansas City Chiefs in Week 9, he stood out with his play, drawing praise from head coach Rex Ryan:

"I liked the way he played, I really did. Marcus is a kid that really jumped out on the practice field, when he was on the scout team. He did things where you said, 'This kid deserves a shot.' He earned a starting job [last week]."

Williams led the team with seven tackles in his debut while helping contain Kansas City's passing game, but he would only continue to progress from this mark.  

Williams' statistics indicate that he has been easy to pick on. According to Pro Football Focus (subscription required), Williams has allowed 75.6 percent of all passes against him to be completed. Williams has been near plenty of completions as a starter, but these are as much by design than his true ability as a cornerback. 

Frankly, Williams has not been asked to do much this season relative to most starting cornerbacks. Recognizing his inexperience, Ryan has not asked Williams to do much more than keep plays in front of him and avoid disaster—which is why he can lead the team in tackles so easily.

In his first start against the Chiefs—who have a historically unproductive group of wide receivers—Williams gave his opponents a comical amount of space in his first NFL start. 

Credit: NFL Game Rewind

This past week against the New England Patriots, however, was an entirely different story. With nothing to lose, Ryan rolled the dice on Williams' ability to hold up in single coverage, a gamble that paid off much more often than not. After playing so well in both zone and man coverage this season, Williams deserves to be taken seriously as a high-end depth corner at the very least. 

Williams was not just asked to hold up in single coverage—he was tasked with handling some of the best players in the game on his own, and, with a hint of luck, came out on top, starting with this incompletion to Rob Gronkowski in a key third-down situation. 

Williams is in press-man coverage at the line of scrimmage—quite the bold stance to be in against a player of Gronkowski's caliber—set to run a slant route for what the Patriots would assume to be an easy, quick gain given this matchup. 

Credit: NFL Game Rewind

Williams, however, refuses to back down to Gronkowski. He gets right in his face when Gronkowski tries to break off his route, getting his hands inside his shoulders to control him as much as possible—textbook technique. 

Credit: NFL Game Rewind

Gronk's sheer size and strength are still able to give Brady a (small) throwing window to work with, but the timing is way off, resulting in an incompletion. 

Credit: NFL Game Rewind

If this play took place three weeks earlier, this likely would have been a completion. Williams was still spending the vast majority of his time sitting in a zone, preventing any big plays from occurring. Here, Ryan trusted him to hold his own, even against a player like Gronk, and was rewarded. 

This incompletion may not have changed the course of the game either way, but it showed that Williams was up to the challenge of playing man-to-man coverage against one of the most physical players in the game. 

Williams has flashed enough ability to stick around on an NFL roster beyond this season, but whether or not he can maintain and build upon these strong performances will determine if he is a one-hit wonder who was the benefactor of some lucky bounces, or if he is truly a diamond in the rough. 

After all, even when he had his first career interception against Brady in the second half, Williams was beat handily on a curl route:

Credit: NFL Game Rewind

Even if he was a bit lucky to see the receiver bobble the pass, he still showed off some tremendous ball skills to react to and catch the ball on the fly, especially in such a critical juncture in the game. 

It is too early to peg Williams as anything more than a high-end backup at this point, but the fact that he was able to hold up in press-man coverage makes him worth enough to keep around on an NFL roster. 

Elsa/Getty Images

It would, however, be a bit of a stretch to peg Williams as a nickel or dime cornerback simply because he has not shown quite enough to be a boundary starter. One of the reasons he went undrafted is because of his questionable lateral movement and stiff hips, a death knell for a position that requires so much agility. 

If Williams is going to last in the NFL, his best chance will be at boundary cornerback. 

Based on the Jets' depth chart ordering, the coaches believe more in Williams than any other cornerback on the roster. Every corner has rotated in and out of the starting lineup at some point, including known commodities like Darrin Walls. Williams, however, is the only player who has managed to keep a starting spot when given a chance. 

The unfortunate truth for Williams is that a good portion of his fate will ride on the Jets' precarious coaching situation. If an expected change is made, he will have to prove, yet again, that he is much more than a undrafted camp body to a new coaching staff. 

At the very least, Williams has put out enough quality tape for the NFL to see he deserves a real chance at a lasting career in the NFL. 

Advanced statistics provided by ProFootballFocus.com (subscription required).

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