In a small town along Interstate 75 in the heart of Georgia, between Macon and Atlanta, they know him as Desmond Williams.
Brian Nelson knows him as so much more.
“I’ve been here 18 years,” the football coach at Mary Persons High School in Forsyth, (population: 4,400) told The News Tribune Friday on the phone from Georgia.
“Desmond’s is one of the most unbelievable stories ever.
“He didn’t have a lot coming up,” Nelson said. “There were so many chances for him to go the wrong way. He had every reason in the world to quit. He couldn’t even get on the field in high school until he was a junior.
“And here he is in the NFL.
“I use his story as an example for my team now.”
Here he is, known around Seattle as “Dee” Williams. Forsyth’s Desmond has seized a prime chance to make the NFL as an undrafted rookie, as the Seahawks’ new kickoff returner this season.
Saturday is Williams’ third preseason game. The Seahawks host Cleveland at Lumen Field (7 p.m., KING-5 television).
“Unbelievable, man,” Nelson said.
Tuesday is the league deadline to cut rosters from 90 players to the regular-season limit of 53. That’s when Williams will find out if this unlikely story continues with him playing in the NFL for Seattle this season.
“He had every reason to not be there,” Nelson said.
Dee Williams’ ‘unbelievable’ path
Contrerrie Taylor and Larry Williams raised their daughters Keambria and Brieanna plus sons Cory, Shun and Desmond — five children seven years apart — in a rural home outside Forsyth.
Coach Nelson often drove out there to pick Dee up for practice and drop him off after it. That was to keep him on the football team. And, really, to keep him OK.
“When you would ask him, ‘Would you like to stop at McDonald’s?’ He’d say, ‘Yes, sir. Thank you,’” Nelson said.
“He appreciates everything. You give him a Powerade after practice, and he tells you ‘thank you.’ He is so appreciative.
“This is not a kid that’s got an extra 20 dollars in his wallet to go to Waffle House or Dairy Queen to get something to eat.
“I’d give him the shirt off my back. He’s just unbelievable.”
Williams also lettered in three basketball seasons as a scoring guard at Mary Persons High. Nelson recalls seeing Williams win high-jump competitions at track meets with no practice and barely any run-up to his leap. Almost static jumping, and winning.
“One of the most unbelievable athletes I’ve ever seen,” Nelson said.
Yet when Williams was a senior on the Mary Persons football team in the fall of 2018, he wanted to quit.
“I was done with playing football for a couple months,” he said this week on the edge of the Seahawks’ practice field. “I didn’t feel like continuing on playing.”
He was discouraged. He wasn’t getting any offers to play in college. He was likely not going to further his education. His grades weren’t good.
“When they get to be seniors it’s coming down to it. There is some finality to it,” Coach Nelson said Friday, hours before his Mary Persons played its season opener in Georgia. “He wasn’t the best student. It wasn’t for his lack of trying. It was just hard for him.”
Williams said: “I was just at a moment to where it was, like, ‘What am I going to do now?’”
That’s when Nelson changed Williams’ life.
Nelson knew a coach at East Central Community College in Decatur, Mississippi, another small school in another even smaller town (population: 2,000) east of Jackson.
“You’re just cold-calling people, almost,” Nelson said.
He implored the JUCO coach to watch Williams’ game tape as a cornerback and wide receiver. He asked him to give the kid a chance.
He did. East Central CC’s coach came to Forsyth in early 2019 to offer Williams a place in his college and on his team.
“I was still kind of hesitant about going off to JUCO, obviously being away from family at home,” Williams said.
He’d never lived with anybody who’d done it.
“But I did it,” he said.
In the summer of 2019, Williams became the first in his family of seven to go to college.
“The first three weeks at JUCO, I was kind of a little homesick, obviously,” he said, “and my mom and dad just told me to just stick with the plan. (They said): ‘If football is really what you want to do and continue your career with, then you’re gonna have to get through ups and downs to keep going forward.’
“And so that’s what I did.”
Listed by the Seahawks at 5 feet 10 and 190 pounds, Williams was 170 pounds when he arrived at East Central. He spent three years there.
His second JUCO season got interrupted by the coronavirus pandemic. That brought him back to the community college for a third year. He had seven interceptions and 14 pass breakups in nine games that third season at East Central. He averaged more than 50 yards per game returning kicks, with a touchdown on a punt return. He was rated among the top cornerbacks among all junior-college players in the nation for 2021.
The University of Tennessee noticed. The Volunteers of the mighty Southeastern Conference signed Williams to a scholarship that winter. He enrolled at UT in January 2022.
His first year for the Vols he led the SEC in punt returns at almost 19 yards per run back. His career average of 15.4 yards per punt return is a UT record. Last season he had one touchdown on a punt return and another negated by a penalty. He ranked in the top six in major-college football in punt returns. He zoomed down the field making tackles covering kicks.
The Seahawks invited him to their headquarters in Renton for a pre-draft visit this spring. They signed him following the NFL draft in early May. They gave him a $100,000 guaranteed salary for this season, the second-most among the team’s 17 rookie free agents this spring, plus a $25,000 cash bonus to sign.
Coach Nelson’s call paid off.
Dee Williams’ path to the roster
Here’s where Williams’ “unbelievable story” gets another break.
To get more returns while trying to limit head injuries on the dangerous play, the NFL changed its kickoff rules for 2024. Now the kicker is alone to kick off from his 35-yard line. His kick-coverage team lines up across the receiving team’s 40-yard line. The receiving team’s blockers line up 5 yards opposite them, along the 35.
The kicker must place his kick between the 20-yard line and the goal line, the “target zone,” for there to be a return. Touchbacks come out to the 30.
Previously, special-teams coaches most often had a lone kickoff returner back deep on or near the goal line. The opponents had 65 yards to run to get to him.
“I think he’s got a niche with the new kickoff rule in the NFL,” Nelson said of Williams.
“It’s a neat story, man.”
New Seahawks special-teams coach Jay Harbaugh needs a traditional returner, a speedy game-breaker, to get through the lone line of coverage tacklers. There’s now usually only the kicker to beat if the returner breaks through the coverage line.
That’s Williams. He also has played cornerback this month after switching from wide receiver two days into this Seahawks training camp.
Harbaugh also needs a bigger ball carrier who can break through those tacklers that now come at the returner more quickly. That’s Laviska Shenault. The 6-1, 225-pound wide receiver in from Carolina on his third NFL chance has seized a job in Seattle’s training camp.
The Seahawks have used two returners deep along the goal line all six times an opponent has kicked off through two preseason games. Williams has been back deep on five of those six kickoffs.
The pairs of returners they have used: Williams and Shenault twice, Williams and Dareke Young twice, Williams with Easop Winston Jr. once and D.J. James with Dee Eskridge once.
Williams was also the returner deep on all four Tennessee punts in the game last weekend.
Either they are about to keep Williams on the team, or the Seahawks have been wasting his and everyone’s time on returns this month.
A big preseason
Seattle’s two longest kickoff returns this preseason have been by Shenault (43 yards, at the Chargers Aug. 10) and Williams (last weekend at Tennessee).
“I’ve got to thank God for the opportunity that that rule changed for me,” Williams said. “I think that’s one of the biggest reasons why I’m here at this level right now, because of the kickoff rule and the coaches and myself knowing that I can be like that dynamic player for the new rules.”
To begin Seattle’s preseason game at Tennessee, Williams fielded the opening kickoff 2 yards deep in the end zone. Williams followed Shenault as his lead blocker to the right. A block from Jake Bobo off the right edge of the kick-block formation at the Seattle 35-yard line allowed Williams through the first line.
Shenault then threw a flying, crushing block outside right on Titans cornerback Jarvis Brownlee. Williams sped past that hit down the right sideline. When Tennessee’s Elijah Molden came over to cut off Williams’ path, Williams lowered his shoulder and delivered the hit, instead of taking one.
Williams’ teammates along the Seahawks’ sideline loved that. They roared and jumped and patted Williams on the back. Pro Bowl cornerback Devon Witherspoon, in particular and out of uniform not playing, went wild over Williams’ 41-yard return.
“He’s got really good movement ability,” new Seahawks coach Mike Macdonald said.
Williams also has really good appreciation of where he came from, and for Coach Nelson back in Forsyth.
“Whenever I do go home, I make sure I make of getting a connection with him,” Williams said. “Every time.”
The first in his family to attend college is an online class away from graduating from Tennessee. He is completing it now, during his push to debut in the NFL.
Williams smiled looking forward to earning his bachelor’s degree in communication studies this fall.
“It’s a big accomplishment,” he said. “I know my brothers and sisters are proud of me, as well and the rest of my family.
“I just also want to carry that on with my niece and nephews. And I know other small children that look up to me back home. And I just wish I could tell everyone, all kids out there, there’s always a way to continue on with your future. But just keep God first.
“And keep pushing through everything you do.”
This story was originally published August 23, 2024, 4:25 PM.
