Jonah Williams' unique preparation could make him the best tackle in NFL selection

Williams considered that playing the offensive attack in Alabama was a "full-time job", to the point that it was impossible to predict where would go the inaccessible search for perfection.

"He is football fanatic," said former Alabama offensive line coach Mario Cristobal, who is now Oregon 's head coach. "I mean that in a good way."

It is this obsession and this quest for greatness that could make Williams the first offensive lineman to enter the NFL draft. It is believed that the New York Jets would be interested if they traded in third place. The New York Giants are an outdoor possibility with the sixth choice. Williams met or visited both teams in New York. He also met or visited the Arizona Cardinals, Buffalo Bills, Cincinnati Bengals, Jacksonville Jaguars, Detroit Lions and Washington Redskins, all top 15 teams.

Williams competes with Andre Dillard of Washington State and Jawaan Taylor of Florida for being the first offensive lineman to leave the table. It's a contest that he certainly wants to win.

Approach & # 39; genius & # 39;

What sets Williams apart is the approach and preparation that, in his opinion, helped to make him the best tackle of the project. Who else has created a spreadsheet for every opponent that he has faced in recent years at the college level? This commitment has brought back the idol of Williams and future future Hall of Fame member Joe Thomas.

"It's engineering," Thomas told ESPN about spreadsheets.

That was the way Williams was preparing for the next level, since he was already taking notes on his opponents and making qualitative statements based on the observations. But that was not enough. Williams wanted quantitative information about the shipboard attackers he would be facing every week.

He began to list four of the five movements of each opponent (bull run, spin / swim, hash / dip, etc.) in an Excel spreadsheet. Williams estimates that this is about 90% of what other players have done on the field. He would enumerate each time that they would move and mark if they won or lost that particular representative. The worksheet has a "LOSS / GAIN" column on the far right.

This gives Williams an opportunity to calculate the percentage of the frequency at which his opponents execute each shot and the frequency with which they win. Enter the spider web, which summarizes the results for each opponent.

"So, I can have a different approach to a move that a guy does 60% of the time, but I'm not even going to really prepare myself that much if it never wins," Williams said. "But if he's doing five moves with a 100% win percentage, I'd better be ready for that – he'll bring it to me – I'd better get ready for that." "

This is similar to what Thomas did (minus the spreadsheet) during his Hall of Fame career with the Browns, when he directed 10 Pro Bowls and that he was seven times the first teammate. Thomas kept handwritten notebooks on his opponents after watching four or five tape games on each player.

Thomas said he learned the "kindergarten / primary school" version of Lennie Friedman and Hank Fraley when he entered the league. He has never heard of anyone so advanced as Williams at the college level.

"It just shows his level of preparation," said Thomas. "That says a lot about the success that he will have at the next level, because that's the type of preparation you need to be able to gain an advantage over your opponent." was not so advanced when I was in college. "

Williams does everything with a purpose. He even went so far as to ask the team of scouts to mimic the move chosen by the opponent of the week. In this way, he could develop an effective plan of attack.

More often than not, Williams can find a tape message that avoids movement. Otherwise, he always wants to be ready. Williams is a big supporter of the idea that while he drills relentlessly something, he ends up becoming a muscle memory.

"I'm going to look for stories, I'll look at his feet, sometimes the guys get up with their heart, they want to be able to take a step forward on their third step, things like that," Little says. declared. "His balance Sometimes, guys, if they're about to do something, it's almost like being a catcher, they'll pretend to falsify the situation and overreact to it.

"Sometimes, there are five representatives and [I] I do not find any similarity, I will continue to focus on it, to pierce it and to think how I will beat it. "

Basically, through all studies and analyzes, Williams is still a football player to take away. He just wants to effectively block everything presented to him on a given day.

He did it at the college level. That's why he's almost at the top of the conversation for the first offensive lineman off the board Thursday night.

Dominant against the competition

This is the draft of the NFL. No matter how good Williams is at meetings, tours, and individual workouts, potential candidates are stung, solicited, and stung. For Williams, this was his 335/8-inch arm and a handful of snaps in the BCS National Championship against Clemson. Ideally, NFL teams would like the arms of a tackler to measure at least 34 inches. Thomas knows it well. He was in the same boat, even if it did not show on the ground.

If only Williams's fingers were a little longer, his arm length would be the same. That's the stupidity of the process.

"To be quite honest, I'm tired of hearing about [arm length], Said Williams. I do not think people will talk about it in a month. It will be about what I can do for the team that writes me. "

Whoever takes it will do so because the team has seen a productive and dominant player. This is of the utmost importance on Thursday.

There is no doubt about his dominance. He started 44 games in Alabama, awarding five sacks in three years as a starter. Four of these five arrived in his first year. According to Pro Football Focus, he had zero goals as a junior last season and only 12 shots on 466 attempts.

Williams started his college career in the right tackle, where he started 15 games as a real freshman. He played his last two seasons at the left tackle. He is projected as a left tackle, a straight tackle or a guard in the NFL. Teams needing help saw him as a tackle. Those who are at the tackle mainly told Williams that they considered him a guard who could later slide to tackle.

"People are trying to cast him." Jonah is a left tackle, his way of moving and everything else, "said Duke Manyweather, an online search and development consultant. "People try to separate him.They try to say what he can not do.You have to watch his work and what he can do – it's 99.9% of the time that he wins, not only does he win, he looks easy. "

As Williams noted, he was doing it at the SEC and against Clemson every year. It has been tested by the highest competition.

Manyweather compared Williams to Green Bay Packers' left-winger David Bakhtiari, who was All-Pro last season in the left-sided attack.

Williams's preference is to stay at the left tackle. The competitor dictates it just as much.

"When you devote your life to something and you spend 18 hours a day on lightening it, then someone tells you that you can not do anything because your arms are 3/4 of an inch too short? It pisses me off ". "Who are you to say that about me after I've dedicated my life to this?"

But once Williams is drafted, he will do whatever is asked, without a glance. After all, he is an offensive lineman.

"I just want to play," he added.

That's what he is most comfortable with. In the meantime, he will sweat and wriggle until his name is called.