Quinnen Williams Sees 2020 Clearly After Looking Back on Rough Rookie Season

A tough rookie season sets up Quinnen Williams to make an impact in 2020.

New York Jets' second-year defensive lineman Quinnen Williams has a different viewpoint of the 2020 Jets training camp. While many observers will focus on the injury pileup and the health restrictions, Williams sees his own improvements as the biggest takeaway.

Thursday marked the close of training camp and for Williams, was a moment to reflect on where he was a year ago.

“It was amazing, man,” Williams told reporters in a virtual press conference on Thursday. “This year it was way better in my point of view than last year. Just coming in doing everything right. Getting after it, working hard every day, learning new things every day, and just be with my guys. The comradery we had this year. Just the things that we did on the field, off the field, we got better every day and going against that (the Jets) offensive line. I feel like the whole team got better on this training camp and just this whole training camp has been a great experience.”

Williams emerged last year as the starter after Leonard Williams was traded to the New York Giants. This year, he has been healthy in camp after suffering both neck and ankle injuries a season ago. He had 28 tackles, 2.5 sacks, and a fumble recovery in 13 games in 2019.

"One area I feel like the whole defensive line improved, not only myself, is conditioning, strength,” Williams added. “Just the different things we work on during the offseason, you can see those things. The whole defense, the whole offense, everybody came ready to work this training camp. Everybody wasn't behind, honestly. Everybody was working their tail off this offseason and coming into training camp, everyone was on point. That's what you want to see on the team."

Head coach Adam Gase has been impressed with Williams’ physicality and told reporters two weeks ago that he thinks the Jets just might have a defensive lineman that can be an impact player.

“When he gets his one-on-one mashups, that's the key,” Gase said then. “Are we going to win our one-on-one matchups? Hopefully, this year when he gets those opportunities, he's winning a majority of them.”

Last year, the overall defense ranked seventh in the NFL and had particular success stopping the run. They ranked second in the NFL giving up an average of 3.34 yards per carry, and allowing 86.9 yards rushing per game.

Williams studied other linemen over the offseason, most notably Chris Jones of the Kansas City Chiefs and DeForest Buckner of the San Francisco 49ers. He did a film study on their moves and is trying to emulate their style of play.

The only real way to see if there is a marked improvement is in the results of the upcoming games, but Quinnen Williams was adamant that the work has been done, so the results should be there.

“I've worked hard, right?” Williams answered. “The whole defense worked hard. This year we just feel like we work hard, so we should have put in the work to go be a good team.”