2020 Mountain West Football Top 50 Players: #39, New Mexico TE Marcus Williams

The New Mexico tight end emerged as a surprising big play threat and becomes the highest-rated Lobos player in this year’s countdown.

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2020 Mountain West Football Top 50 Players: #39, New Mexico TE Marcus Williams

The Lobos tight end emerged as a surprising big play threat and becomes the highest-rated New Mexico player in this year’s countdown.

Contact/Follow @MattK_FS & @MWCwire

A rare kind of offensive weapon.

Only a few tight ends per year tend to make a lot of noise in their teams’ passing games, but the next player on our countdown of the Mountain West’s top athletes did so to a degree that, in some respects, we’ve never seen before.

Though he’s received playing time for New Mexico over the last three seasons, it wasnt until 2019 that Marcus Williams truly broke out as a dangerous receiver. He only caught 26 passes last year, but nine of those catches went for 20 or more yards, the most by a Mountain West tight end since Wyoming’s Jacob Hollister had 11 in 2016, and his 16.46 yards per catch ranked sixth among all pass-catchers in the conference.

According to our research, that also happened to be the highest single-season per-catch average by a qualifying tight end in conference history. He also used those active hands to bolster an explosive running game, too, that trailed only Air Force on a per-carry basis and finished second to Wyoming in 20-yard runs last fall.

Now, as it happens, new offensive coordinator Derek Warehime has had plenty of experience developing tight ends in his previous coaching stops. If he continues to perform like a big play waiting to happen, Williams could be a nightmare matchup for linebackers across the Mountain West.

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