My thoughts on Greedy:
If anyone was in the draft chat during round 2, they know I wasn't a big Greedy fan. I thought his poor tackling would sink him in 2018, and that he wasn't as good an athlete as advertised. I have looked into it more and more, I'm pretty sure my initial reaction was misinformed and, quite frankly, biased because of other players I put more research into. Let's dig in.
Greedy's Production:
Williams has been extremely good for several years now. Obviously you know about his passer rating and pass defenses. Both are high quality and while it does show his ability to become a great pass defender potentially, there are actually other indicators that show what his potentially could be.
According to CommonManFootball's Jim Coburn, some of the best indicators of CB success rate is Tackle Market Share and Pass Deflection Market Share. I'm sure at this point, people might be switching off because of these terms. They are, in my opinion, totally easy to understand. Tackle market share is amount of tackles for the player divided by how many team tackles there are. Same for pass deflections. This shows exactly how he produced on the defense compared to his teammates, which is often a decent indicator of talent and production. I highly recommend visiting Coburn's youtube channel, in particular his video on Williams, and reading the description. He really breaks it down, and straight up shows you how Williams stacks up. It's also short and easy to understand. Go to youtube and look at the description for how to understand these concepts.
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View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpDPkpra65I&t=185s
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ANYWAY, Williams tackle market share and pass deflection market share hovers around two different thresholds: All-Pro and Pro Bowl. What Jim goes onto describe is that while his production might not be the most elite of elite, he meets thresholds to possibly be a long term pro bowl quality corner.
Greedy Williams athletic profile:
Here's the thing about his athletic profile, it's really incomplete. While what we know of Greedy is really good, he didn't perform the most important drills. He measured in with at 6'1 7/8" (92%), 185 pounds (18%), 74 1/2 wing span (53%) 31 1/2 " arm length (51%) and 9 1/4 " hands (57%). As a height, weight, length corner, he obviously posts some really good numbers. Obviously, extremely tall and good arm length and hand size and then added onto it, he runs a 4.37 40 which is blazing fast.
For what we know of most of the current front office as far as what they prefer, we turn to Justis Mosqueda. He is a GB fan, who now works for Optimum Scouting, and wrote this article last year about what Ted Thompson preferred. Obviously with Gutenkunst, it applies to Green Bay a lot. With the Browns, John Dorsey, Eliot Wolf, and Alonzo Highsmith are obviously grew into the NFL with Ted Thompson and probably have similar thinking. This article has other athletic data checkmarks for positions, if you are curious:
https://m.cheeseheadtv.com/blog/jus...rs-draft-board-and-athleticism-thresholds-638
The Thompson Tree prefers their corners be taller than 5'11" (check), 4.57 40 (check), and a 6.83 three cone (didn't run the test). It makes sense why Dorsey had him rated so highly, as his testing was basically off the charts except the three cone which he didn't run. One would assume if he did a private workout, he would have ran the test or they had some idea of his ballpark. As an athlete, Greedy passes a lot of tests.
Greedy Williams player profile conclusion:
I was obviously very unfair to claim that this was a bad pick the moment I heard the announcement. After looking into his great production and superior athletic testing, I think we can conclude that Greedy Williams has all the talent to be a dominating cornerback in the NFL. The question really comes two fold: Why did he not get drafted in the 1st and are there legitimate concerns about his dedication to football? I think both of those questions can be answered with a resounding we will see. It's the only thing that can really stop him and it's the only question that can be totally determined by Greedy himself.
What we can say without a shadow of a doubt, is that Greedy Williams has everything. His tackling in 2018 was weak, but as an overall career, it is right in line with other All-Pro corners. Obviously, the most important thing is that Greedy has shown, analytically, he can be a great cover corner, and ultimately that's what he's going to be asked to do the most. As an athlete, from what we know publically, he easily exceeds what Dorsey is looking for in a corner, which has proven to be successful for other teams like Green Bay.
I'm excited to see the future of Greedy Williams and what he ultimately does opposite Denzel Ward.
