Everything LSU RB Josh Williams Said Ahead of SEC Championship Game
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LSU running back Josh Williams has waited his turn. He's sacrificed and put in the work to make an impact in Baton Rouge.
After years of patiently waiting and continuing to evolve his game, Williams earned a starting role for the Tigers and now has the chance to lead the Tigers to an SEC Championship.
Battling a knee injury as of late, Williams is progressing and looking ready to suit up on Saturday in Atlanta.
Here's everything LSU's starting running back had to say ahead of the SEC title game:
Q. How are you feeling? How is the knee? What do you think your status is going to be for this week?
JOSH WILLIAMS: My knee is doing better than it was last week. I started running more on the grass. The coaches wanted to hold me back, make sure they played it smart for this week. So this week I'm feeling better and progressing for this weekend.
Q. Moving on from this last week's game, the mentality of the team, how have you responded knowing there's still a lot to play for?
JOSH WILLIAMS: Yes, sir, of course. Last week was a letdown, an upset. At the end of the day we're going to look forward to the next game and play that next game like it's our last game. Not going to dwell on the past.
Q. There's been a lot of talk all year about processes, what Coach Kelly brought to change this program. When do you feel like you and your teammates began to really adopt those things and see the benefits of them?
JOSH WILLIAMS: I would say Mississippi State, that week in particular, our first SEC game. We had a few games to kind of get our warmup in, kind of understand what our process was.
I believe going to the Mississippi State game, winning that game, really propelled us, and we stuck to that process.
Q. A few weeks later there was the loss to Tennessee. Why do you think y'all were able to maybe then apply those things even when it maybe looked a little bit rough?
JOSH WILLIAMS: Because we're not perfect. We know some games that we just don't do as well as we expect to do. But that doesn't change our process and our mindset going into the next week. Just because it doesn't look good for one game doesn't mean it can't look good for the next game. We go into it with a positive mindset, look forward to it, yeah.
Q. Could you pick out a couple examples of things that were totally new to you this year under Kelly, whether it's an activity or even a change in scheduling that you found to be particularly helpful to your development as a player and the performance of the team?
JOSH WILLIAMS: Okay. I would say firstly "SWAT" teams. "SWAT" teams has to do weightlifting, we have teams and we have "SWAT" leaders. Basically all our points, we point all our weightlifting sessions, we kind of add those together to see who has the highest score at the end of the week. That was new and effective, I feel like.
We also have to do a survey, telling the strength staff how much sleep you got, how sore we are, how many hours of sleep, how many meals we ate, how stressed we are. We have a turn in a survey every morning. I believe that makes us have discipline because sometimes you may forget.
What's another thing? Hmm... I would say the format of practice, fast-paced. We do five-minute periods rather than longer periods. We're always running around the field, everything is in transition, everything's movement and organized chaos. I believe that's helping us out as well, too.
Q. If you take yourself back to this summer, even after last season, this program was coming off a disappointing year, coaching change. How surprised are you to be here playing for an SEC championship?
JOSH WILLIAMS: If you would have asked me that back in December of last year, then I would have been surprised. Right now I'm not really surprised because I know all the work that we put in starting whenever Coach Kelly got here in December. I know the work we put in as a team.
Looking back on it, I believe we deserve to be here. We put in the time and effort. We incorporated a lot of discipline aspects to the team. I believe that has paid off.
So I think we deserve to be here.
Q. I know you mentioned the Tennessee game earlier. A long afternoon. At that point could you have imagined being in the SEC championship game? What made the difference?
JOSH WILLIAMS: I think about the Tennessee game, we as a team already adopted our process that Coach Kelly implemented. We didn't let Tennessee give us any negative thoughts. We knew we just had a bad game. We just had a few unfortunate plays that made the game look a certain way. We could have been in the game. We knew where our mistakes were.
We weren't thinking negatively as a team. We looked at the film and corrected the mistakes going into the next weekend. We really focused harder on that next weekend. We won, so...
Q. Coach mentioned to you yesterday that you're the kind of runner that really needs to be 100%. What benchmarks are you trying to hit throughout the week or the day of the game to know you will be able to play and be 100%?
JOSH WILLIAMS: Yeah, I talked to the training staff. They basically said it's based on how I feel, how I want to go forward with it.
I'm feeling better than I did last week. I've been progressing every day. I started running last week. I've been doing well starting today even.
I'm excited to see how well I progress. I'm pretty confident that I'm going to make an appearance in the game. I just want to put it in God's hands and see how it goes.
Q. What do you think it means to LSU at this point in the season to have this opportunity to compete for the SEC title? What's at stake?
JOSH WILLIAMS: I think it means a lot for LSU that we're competing for the SEC title because, like I previously said earlier, we had an upsetting season last year, a coaching change, everybody just giving us no credit. They had no expectations for us this season.
Just for us to turn it all the way around and actually get to the SEC championship is good for the school. It's good for the football program and recruiting. So we're excited.
Q. You'll be long gone by the time the Playoffs are expanded from 4 to 12. Have you given that any thought? Do you think there's a chance it makes conference championships any more or less important?
JOSH WILLIAMS: I'm sure the College Football Playoff Committee would ensure some rules to make it fair.
I think it will be a good change, giving more teams the opportunity to compete that lost earlier in the season because they have more upsets. The only thing is, I was wondering how many games each team would play, if they had to add any games.
I think it will be pretty cool if they added it like that.
Q. A lot of people have talked about the mentality about the true freshmen that have started this season. What's an example of showing the strong mentality they needed to start as freshmen?
JOSH WILLIAMS: It means that not only they're amazing players to be freshmen starting in the SEC, that's amazing and actually a tough feat in itself, but it shows they bought into Coach Kelly's process. As a team, we all have.
Going back to the true freshmen, they have discipline. They're putting in extra work. They're really buying into being pros, young pros, on and off the field.
It's a beautiful thing. It's an exciting thing because you see all the potential.
