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Today we take a brief look at safety Evan Williams during his rookie season.
When the Green Bay Packers selected safety Evan Williams in the fourth round (111th overall) of the 2024 NFL Draft, expectations were modest. But halfway through his rookie season, Williams had already shattered them, emerging as one of the league’s most impressive first-year players — and a dark horse Defensive Rookie of the Year candidate.
Williams began his collegiate career at Fresno State in 2019 before transferring to Oregon for his final season in 2023. His adaptability and football IQ stood out, making him a late-round steal for the Packers. Despite missing a few games due to hamstring and quadriceps injuries, Williams appeared in 12 regular-season games and Green Bay’s playoff matchup, starting six games in the regular season and one in the postseason.
Safeties in the Robert Saleh lineage of defenses are some of the most versatile chess pieces the group of 11 has on the field. Depending on formation and alignment, the safeties are interchangeable between box and free safety.
Jeff Hafley’s vision is no different. Williams’ versatility allows defensive coordinator Jeff Hafley to deploy him in multiple alignments. Per Pro Football Focus, here are his snap counts on defense:
His presence allowed veteran Xavier McKinney to shift into a strong safety/box role while Javon Bullard moved to nickel, optimizing the entire secondary.
Many young safeties struggle with gap discipline, but Williams plays with controlled aggression.
He shows good gap integrity and rarely overcommits, forcing runners into help. Here against Houston, the Packers defense was constantly changing their pre-snap look and changing the picture at the last second on C.J Stroud. There simply isn’t enough time to check out of this run versus an 8-man box.
Williams walks down just before the snap to the line of scrimmage and is the edge setter. Diggs tries to block him, but Williams wards off the block, sets the edge and forces the running back inside, preventing the bounce outside. And then lunges to make the initial tackle.
His tackling efficiency is above average, too. Here he breaks down in space and finishes with authority to stop the Cardinals on a 3rd down in week six of last season.
On a zone read attempt, Williams blitzed off the edge in a safety blitz to shut down the quarterback run. The play is just a classic zone read from the Cardinals with Murray reading the unblocked defensive end for his cue to give to the running back or keep.
Williams triggers quickly off the edge at the snap (run blitz indicator) but feels that there is no blocker sliding to him, sees the run option mesh between the quarterback and running back and halts his momentum to play the quarterback. His responsibility on the zone read is to play the quarterback.
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