The virtually never-ending attention to detail for Arizona Cardinals cornerback Garrett Williams goes back to his nascent days at Hickory Ridge High School in Harrisonburg, N.C., continued at Syracuse and now is simply part of daily life for the 2023 third-round draft pick.
“The process is everything to me,” Williams recently said. “You can’t be successful without having a plan of how you’re going to be successful.”
Those words are music to the ears of head coach Jonathan Gannon, who always talks about the process, and also knows he doesn’t have to worry a lot about Williams.
If anything, Gannon is wary of him doing too much, which he related to the media after the Week 8 game against the Dolphins.
“Off the field, I think he’s grown with his process and what he does,” Gannon said. “He’s a guy that—not to get too much into his business—but I felt like was doing a little too much at times so we kind of streamlined his process a little bit. All of our players are different, but he is a guy that pops out in my mind that when he leaves here, he does a lot. I just have talked to him about streamlining what he’s doing from 6:00 p.m. until 11:00 p.m. to make sure that he’s ready to go.
“You’d rather have that, but you look at his iPad, it’s like, ‘Dude, how’d you watch six hours of tape from seven to midnight? Like there’s only five hours.’ I’m on him about getting enough rest and unwinding. He puts a lot of time into his craft, which I appreciate, but you have to be smart about it too. He’s receptive and he’s good and he’s working on it.”
Gannon then mentioned that he saw Williams’ mom Daphne in the lobby of the team hotel in Miami and she told him “when she comes and visits, he has a process that he doesn’t allow anyone to mess up and that’s a good thing. He’s very mature.”
The extremely self-aware Williams smiled at that and told Cards Wire, “My family knows. I’ve been doing this since high school, college, as really when I started doing it like that. But they get it, they get me. It’s good to have people in your corner who support you and understand you and don’t it see as you ignoring them or you not acknowledging. Because I think we’re all on the same page where my success is their success.
“If I play well and I achieve things I wanna achieve, it’s not just for me, it’s more about making my family proud, making my friends proud, making my city proud. That’s what drives me to wanna keep trying to do those things every day, knowing there are people who brag about me and talk about me. I just want to make them smart for saying those type of things about me.”
Asked what led to him being so driven in high school, Williams said, “Looking at how my mom and my dad (George), how they approach their jobs. They were very similar; they put a lot of time into it. They always planned everything out that they do. Always big on the attention to details, so watching that over time and seeing how successful each of them are individually. So, to me, just apply it to football.”
Williams also mentioned college secondary teammates Andre Cisco and Ifeatu Melifonwu along with cornerbacks coach Chip West for being instrumental in his development.
Coincidentally, Cisco (Jaguars) and Melifonwu (Lions) were also third-round NFL draft picks, but two years before Williams, who likely would have been a higher choice had he not suffered a torn ACL during his senior season. West is now the cornerbacks coach at Wake Forest.
“They really showed me the football way of doing it and so I just took everything my parents taught me and matched it with everything they taught me,” Williams said. “It kinda created one big perfect storm and I’ve been sticking to that ever since.”
How Williams works at it obviously helps him do all the things he’s asked to do by the Cardinals coaching staff.
Asked on a recent Tuesday about how he is able to be so versatile, defensive coordinator Nick Rallis said, “I guess the fact that he’s up there right now already on his day off, getting the game plan. It starts with that. Extremely intelligent with a skill set to play corner, nickel or safety. So he does a really good job at learning those different techniques because that’s a lot of different techniques right there. He could go play any of those spots and having the mental combined with the skill set, honestly, of being able to, that’s not easy to do, but he does a phenomenal job with that.
“It’s just his understanding of what we ask of him and those different techniques and what needs to get done. He gets the tough straw a lot in the slot. That’s a tough position to play because you’ve got the whole route tree to defend and a lot of times you don’t have any help and you can’t get beat deep, but you have to challenge the first- and second-level routes. There’s a lot going on for him.”
When Rallis was told what Gannon said about trying to dial him back, he said, “I think that’s layered. I was just talking about his schematic process of prepping for the game plan. But it’s also his health, it’s his physical preparation. He pours a lot of extra time into actual work too, whether that’s lifting, whether that’s on-the-field positional work, whether that’s recovery. Like, his whole life is football.”
As for the detailed prep work, Rallis added, “He takes in as much data as he can to make himself better. I actually heard him having a conversation and some of the stuff that he was saying, it’s like stuff that I wasn’t even thinking about. How he sees the opponent is impressive. And yet ultimately, with people like that, that are that intelligent and that detailed, sometimes you have to be able to filter out the relevant stuff and help them with that. Because ultimately, it’s all about, ‘How can I apply it on the field?’
“Once you take in all those details, what is important for me? We call it the pre-stamp checklist. Like what’s my pre-stamp checklist? What do I really need to know within this coverage that we have or the call that we have within what they’re showing, the situation formation, the people all that. What do I need to know? And then from there, just let it rip. And he’s done a great job with that, and you can see it in his preparation that it’s really paying off on Sundays.”
Rallis also talked about a discussion he had with Williams about his routine in the offseason where he does work on his body until it’s time to go to bed. He said he asked Williams if he has a social life, to which he said, “Yeah, a little bit” and wondered if heard he went out to dinner whether that’s actually true.
“So, dial back?” Rallis said. “That’s hard to say for certain. He ultimately is the one that knows what’s the right amount, but he puts a lot of time.”
Coming back from an ACL is always difficult and making it harder for Williams was getting on the field halfway through last season as a rookie.
“It’s very hard to come back mid-season, where you don’t get any kind of offseason prep into it,” Rallis said. “And that’s a two-year recovery, ultimately. And so, you can see physically he’s looking really good right now. I’m sure he’s finally getting back to that point where he’s his normal self.”
One thing Williams stressed is how he appreciates those that voice their concern while also being patient and supportive during his rehab.
“Checking on me, it means a lot because they understand me and they also understand knowing that sometimes I do kinda of overdo it,” Williams said. “So to have people in your building who actually care enough to be like, ‘Hey, what time did you go to bed? How much film do you watch when you’re home? Don’t watch too much.’ That type of stuff does mean a lot because I know it’s not like that everywhere.
“So to have coaches who care about you enough who wanna make sure you’re good and wanna see you at your absolute best from a genuine care; that’s something that’s been consistent from (general manager) Monti (Ossenfort), JG, really everybody here since I got here especially in my situation coming here with the injury. I think they’ve always done everything they can to make sure that I’m in the best situation and make sure that I feel good and comfortable and healthy. I am always appreciative of them.”
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