Another great interview on TOS that I finally got around to reviewing once I had some free time, this time on new corners coach Paul Williams. My reactions:
* This interview reinforced my overall impression of Williams, which is an established, veteran coach we're bringing in to develop players. Staffs have a range of skill sets and personalities and part of that is that some coaches are relied on more for really developing their rooms (as opposed to guys whose main value add is through recruiting). Theoretically all coaches need to walk and chew gum at the same time and you sacrifice something damaging if coaches fall short in either player development or recruiting. I'm hoping the new staff gets this balance right better than the old staff. But realistically individual coaches are going to have different value propositions and some positions are going to be relatively more or less important to coach. I see cornerback as one of the more important positions to coach up and Williams as one of the cleanest resumes of player development on the staff.
* Before sharing more thoughts on Williams, the discussion of differences between position coach roles made me want to update my count of how many scholarship players each assistant is responsible for. Given that Taylor constructed his staff dramatically differently than Shaw, this is going to look a lot different, with a lot more individualized attention for linemen and defensive backs. Based on my count of 2023 scholarships, I'm tracking that Taylor will be head coach and offensive coordinator as well as having four scholarship (from here out all numbers refer to scholarships, omitting the word just for brevity) QBs in his room, April will be defensive coordinator as well as having seven OLBs (but Armitage a distinct possibility to be more of a DL), Gregory will be special teams coordinator (three specialists and dozens of players working with the teams) as well as having six S (possibility for an addition or two depending on incoming class position assignments), Netter/Talamaivao will co-coach 14 OL, Osborne will have ten WRs (in addition to helping with the four QBs), Kolodziej will have nine DL (possibly ten pending Armitage.....note this count includes Geweniger and Staples, who I was surprised to see listed as DL on the official site), Williams will have eight DBs (possibility for a subtraction or two depending on incoming class position assignments), D'Onofrio will have seven ILBs, Agnew will have six RBs, and Byham will have five TEs. WR and DL stand out as being in the most danger of lacking individualized coaching attention while ILB, RB, and TE - as usual, nature of the sport - are lighter position rooms. How Osborne does as Robin to Taylor's Batman will interest me....seems like a lot being thrown at Osborne due to our co-OL coach experiment. I expect D'Onofrio to help as a sounding board for April and Agnew and Byham to be recruiters first and foremost.
* My main takeaway from all of this will not be a surprise to anyone who has read my takes on staff construction before: with OL and DB accounting for nearly half of the snaps on their respective sides of the ball, there is a strong case to be made for more specialized coaching, which we are definitely doing with our DB coaching breakdown and are kind of doing on OL - not so much specialized as more individualized by getting more coverage. Moreover, we currently have fewer DBs on the roster than was often the case under Akina so will be likely to get even more individualized attention in that regard.
* The big question for us at DB is whether this more specialized and individualized attention will pay off in player development. There are reasons to think it will and reasons to think it won't. Akina was not chopped liver as a coach and as antiquated as I believe a one DB coach arrangement to be, the Shaw regime left a higher bar to clear at DB coaching (especially if you also lump in DB recruiting) than at most positions. There are also fair questions about Gregory's extremely light and extremely dated experience as a safeties coach (have to hope generalized teaching chops and football knowledge will compensate). But on balance I'm an optimist on this front, mainly because of Williams' track record.
* To dig deeper into Williams' track record, my first approximation of his coaching acumen was an analysis I did at the time of hire comparing his Wake Forest CB grades with Akina's Stanford CB grades in the same time period. Among 27 Wake Forest or Stanford CB seasons between 2020-2022, seven of the top ten were from Wake Forest and seven of the bottom ten were from Stanford. That seems pretty suggestive of better CB coaching at Wake Forest, especially considering Stanford's higher standard of recruiting.
* Another metric that might appeal is Williams' track record in developing NFL corners. Williams came in to Wake the same year as Caelen Carson, the composite #1725 recruit, and coached Carson the last three years to the point Carson is now viewed as a fringe top ten corner prospect for next year's draft. In last year's draft Ja'Sir Taylor, a former composite #1900 recruit who Williams inherited and coached his last two years in college, got drafted in the sixth round and had 22 tackles and a pass defended as a rookie for the Chargers. [Two Houston corners who transferred to Houston for the 2019 season got drafted last year and if Williams recruited them that is a feather in his evaluation cap but not coaching cap since he never coached them] In the 2019 draft, Isaiah Johnson, who was the #1462 composite recruit, became a fourth round pick after getting one year of coaching from Williams in Johnson's second year as a corner (after being a converted receiver). Williams' bio has the following eye-catching series of claims about mentoring NFL talent: "Williams has a long history of training NFL talent during his coaching career. Williams has 11 players on active NFL rosters and has produced 14 NFL draft picks from five different schools. In his last six stops as an on-field coach, Williams has produced at least one NFL defensive back." That's impressive, especially given the many years he's coached at programs that don't recruit at as high a level as Stanford typically does. But what I find most salient is what Williams has done in recent years while specializing as a corners coach. That's what's apples-to-apples with what we hired him for and if you look through that lens you'll find Carson, Taylor, and Johnson. That strikes me as extraordinarily impressive in terms of NFL output from a four year stretch at minor recruiting powers like Houston and Wake Forest, and it doesn't even include the two Houston guys he may have evaluated and recruited as transfers. If you look at the 2019-2024 drafts, Akina's NFL resume is Paulson Adebo (composite #110), Kyu Blu Kelly (composite #730), and Kendall Williamson (composite #426), a comparable level of output from an extraordinarily higher base level of talent. I don't expect Williams to be able to get 4-star and extremely high 3-star corners to commit to Stanford at the rate Akina did, as that was unprecedented in Stanford's history, but I don't think Williams has to. He's already proven that he can churn out NFL prospects from much lower on-paper talent bases.
* Another way to look into Williams' coaching acumen is to assess his frequency in producing all-conference corners. By that measure, Williams had an honorable mention guy in 2020, two honorable mention in 2021, and nothing in 2022, which compares to Stanford having an honorable mention in 2020, a second teamer in 2021, and a second teamer in 2022, although all three Stanford honors were Kyu Blu Kelly whereas Williams coached up two corners to honors rather than Stanford's one. In the three years at Wake Forest prior to Williams, the Demon Deacons had one honorable mention corner, a second team corner, and a third team corner, all the same guy so like the Stanford situation unable to have multiple honored guys like Williams did. Before Wake Forest, Williams did not have an honoree in his lone year at Houston, which also did not have any corners honored the year before Williams arrived or the year after he departed. Before Houston he coached DB groups writ large and wasn't specialized as solely a corners coach. In 2017 at Illinois he had two honorable mention guys (a corner and a safety); in the three years following Williams Illinois had three honorable mention guys over the three years combined, including a guy whose first two years of instruction were from Williams and a guy who played his first year under Williams and had a higher PFF grade in his one year with Williams than any of the three subsequent years. At Miami, WIlliams had a first team all-conference safety in his first year in 2011 and a second team corner in his last year in 2015; the Williams era was a major slump for Miami as they had six first or second team DBs in the five years preceding Williams and five in the five years after Williams. Based on this data, one can reasonably surmise that Williams has grown as a coach over time.
* This interview reinforced my overall impression of Williams, which is an established, veteran coach we're bringing in to develop players. Staffs have a range of skill sets and personalities and part of that is that some coaches are relied on more for really developing their rooms (as opposed to guys whose main value add is through recruiting). Theoretically all coaches need to walk and chew gum at the same time and you sacrifice something damaging if coaches fall short in either player development or recruiting. I'm hoping the new staff gets this balance right better than the old staff. But realistically individual coaches are going to have different value propositions and some positions are going to be relatively more or less important to coach. I see cornerback as one of the more important positions to coach up and Williams as one of the cleanest resumes of player development on the staff.
* Before sharing more thoughts on Williams, the discussion of differences between position coach roles made me want to update my count of how many scholarship players each assistant is responsible for. Given that Taylor constructed his staff dramatically differently than Shaw, this is going to look a lot different, with a lot more individualized attention for linemen and defensive backs. Based on my count of 2023 scholarships, I'm tracking that Taylor will be head coach and offensive coordinator as well as having four scholarship (from here out all numbers refer to scholarships, omitting the word just for brevity) QBs in his room, April will be defensive coordinator as well as having seven OLBs (but Armitage a distinct possibility to be more of a DL), Gregory will be special teams coordinator (three specialists and dozens of players working with the teams) as well as having six S (possibility for an addition or two depending on incoming class position assignments), Netter/Talamaivao will co-coach 14 OL, Osborne will have ten WRs (in addition to helping with the four QBs), Kolodziej will have nine DL (possibly ten pending Armitage.....note this count includes Geweniger and Staples, who I was surprised to see listed as DL on the official site), Williams will have eight DBs (possibility for a subtraction or two depending on incoming class position assignments), D'Onofrio will have seven ILBs, Agnew will have six RBs, and Byham will have five TEs. WR and DL stand out as being in the most danger of lacking individualized coaching attention while ILB, RB, and TE - as usual, nature of the sport - are lighter position rooms. How Osborne does as Robin to Taylor's Batman will interest me....seems like a lot being thrown at Osborne due to our co-OL coach experiment. I expect D'Onofrio to help as a sounding board for April and Agnew and Byham to be recruiters first and foremost.
* My main takeaway from all of this will not be a surprise to anyone who has read my takes on staff construction before: with OL and DB accounting for nearly half of the snaps on their respective sides of the ball, there is a strong case to be made for more specialized coaching, which we are definitely doing with our DB coaching breakdown and are kind of doing on OL - not so much specialized as more individualized by getting more coverage. Moreover, we currently have fewer DBs on the roster than was often the case under Akina so will be likely to get even more individualized attention in that regard.
* The big question for us at DB is whether this more specialized and individualized attention will pay off in player development. There are reasons to think it will and reasons to think it won't. Akina was not chopped liver as a coach and as antiquated as I believe a one DB coach arrangement to be, the Shaw regime left a higher bar to clear at DB coaching (especially if you also lump in DB recruiting) than at most positions. There are also fair questions about Gregory's extremely light and extremely dated experience as a safeties coach (have to hope generalized teaching chops and football knowledge will compensate). But on balance I'm an optimist on this front, mainly because of Williams' track record.
* To dig deeper into Williams' track record, my first approximation of his coaching acumen was an analysis I did at the time of hire comparing his Wake Forest CB grades with Akina's Stanford CB grades in the same time period. Among 27 Wake Forest or Stanford CB seasons between 2020-2022, seven of the top ten were from Wake Forest and seven of the bottom ten were from Stanford. That seems pretty suggestive of better CB coaching at Wake Forest, especially considering Stanford's higher standard of recruiting.
* Another metric that might appeal is Williams' track record in developing NFL corners. Williams came in to Wake the same year as Caelen Carson, the composite #1725 recruit, and coached Carson the last three years to the point Carson is now viewed as a fringe top ten corner prospect for next year's draft. In last year's draft Ja'Sir Taylor, a former composite #1900 recruit who Williams inherited and coached his last two years in college, got drafted in the sixth round and had 22 tackles and a pass defended as a rookie for the Chargers. [Two Houston corners who transferred to Houston for the 2019 season got drafted last year and if Williams recruited them that is a feather in his evaluation cap but not coaching cap since he never coached them] In the 2019 draft, Isaiah Johnson, who was the #1462 composite recruit, became a fourth round pick after getting one year of coaching from Williams in Johnson's second year as a corner (after being a converted receiver). Williams' bio has the following eye-catching series of claims about mentoring NFL talent: "Williams has a long history of training NFL talent during his coaching career. Williams has 11 players on active NFL rosters and has produced 14 NFL draft picks from five different schools. In his last six stops as an on-field coach, Williams has produced at least one NFL defensive back." That's impressive, especially given the many years he's coached at programs that don't recruit at as high a level as Stanford typically does. But what I find most salient is what Williams has done in recent years while specializing as a corners coach. That's what's apples-to-apples with what we hired him for and if you look through that lens you'll find Carson, Taylor, and Johnson. That strikes me as extraordinarily impressive in terms of NFL output from a four year stretch at minor recruiting powers like Houston and Wake Forest, and it doesn't even include the two Houston guys he may have evaluated and recruited as transfers. If you look at the 2019-2024 drafts, Akina's NFL resume is Paulson Adebo (composite #110), Kyu Blu Kelly (composite #730), and Kendall Williamson (composite #426), a comparable level of output from an extraordinarily higher base level of talent. I don't expect Williams to be able to get 4-star and extremely high 3-star corners to commit to Stanford at the rate Akina did, as that was unprecedented in Stanford's history, but I don't think Williams has to. He's already proven that he can churn out NFL prospects from much lower on-paper talent bases.
* Another way to look into Williams' coaching acumen is to assess his frequency in producing all-conference corners. By that measure, Williams had an honorable mention guy in 2020, two honorable mention in 2021, and nothing in 2022, which compares to Stanford having an honorable mention in 2020, a second teamer in 2021, and a second teamer in 2022, although all three Stanford honors were Kyu Blu Kelly whereas Williams coached up two corners to honors rather than Stanford's one. In the three years at Wake Forest prior to Williams, the Demon Deacons had one honorable mention corner, a second team corner, and a third team corner, all the same guy so like the Stanford situation unable to have multiple honored guys like Williams did. Before Wake Forest, Williams did not have an honoree in his lone year at Houston, which also did not have any corners honored the year before Williams arrived or the year after he departed. Before Houston he coached DB groups writ large and wasn't specialized as solely a corners coach. In 2017 at Illinois he had two honorable mention guys (a corner and a safety); in the three years following Williams Illinois had three honorable mention guys over the three years combined, including a guy whose first two years of instruction were from Williams and a guy who played his first year under Williams and had a higher PFF grade in his one year with Williams than any of the three subsequent years. At Miami, WIlliams had a first team all-conference safety in his first year in 2011 and a second team corner in his last year in 2015; the Williams era was a major slump for Miami as they had six first or second team DBs in the five years preceding Williams and five in the five years after Williams. Based on this data, one can reasonably surmise that Williams has grown as a coach over time.
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