How the Bengals’ Jonah Williams went from the area’s best player to the Super Bowl
Every so often, word spreads on campus that a new guy is coming aboard, a difference-maker.
Too often, it’s an exaggeration. The shadow-casting big dude materializes as nothing more than just a flabby body camped in front of the vending machine. In the winter months of 2014, Kris Richardson and Troy Taylor heard about some hulking discus thrower in track and field who had arrived at Folsom High School, where Richardson and Taylor were the co-coaches of the powerhouse football program.
“You think, ‘Yeah, yeah, whatever,’” Richardson recalled as he and Taylor sat in a coaching office at Sacramento State, where they now head the Hornets program. “This was different.”
Really different.
Well before Jonah Williams arrived to the Cincinnati Bengals as a first-round draft pick out of Alabama in 2019, and well before his arrival this week in Los Angeles as the starting left tackle for football’s surprise Super Bowl contender against the Los Angeles Rams, his first arrival also turned heads. That was at Folsom, where the Jonah legend was born.
“We looked at Jonah’s high school film and saw this big kid, and I told Kris, ‘He looks aggressive on film. This might work,’” Taylor said. “You always doubt the transfer. How good is he? If they come by to visit you their first day on campus, then it’s important to them. Some guys don’t come to see you for a week. So on that first day, we see this mammoth guy coming up, and Kris and I are going, ‘Please be Jonah! Please be Jonah!”
The coaches then answered the knock on their office door. The strapping 6-foot-5, door-filling lad with a beard stuck out his bear-sized hand and said, “Hi, I’m Jonah Williams.”
Prayers answered. Said Richardson this week, “Oh, we were so happy.”
From brute strength to skill and power
The early returns on Williams at Folsom were concise and to the point. He was brutish, strong and determined. He was raw, and he left teammates feeling road-rashed with the way he plowed through them in practice drills, sometimes leading Richardson and Taylor to halt a session and say, “Jonah. You have to ease up on our guys. We need them but you’re killing them.”
Said Taylor this week, “He’d make some of our kids cry.”
As a 4.0-GPA student who was all manners and ears, Williams was coachable. He wanted to be great. It meant something to him alright.
“At first, he drove-block everybody, just mauled guys, and threw them to the ground,” Richardson said.
Before Williams went 11th overall to the Bengals in that 2019 draft, Richardson showed his Hornets linemen Folsom film clips of his prized pupil. Guards, tackles and centers leaned in and marveled at what they saw. Said Richardson to The Bee in 2019, “Showed film of Jonah annihilating guys, the wreckage of knocking a lineman down, then getting to a linebacker, then to a safety, all on one play — amazing. You just don’t get guys like that. They saw Jonah launching guys, shot putting them 5 yards down field.”
Those film clips showed the polished Williams product, the 6-5, 300-pound 5-star prospect who graded out as the ideal tackle with every big-name college football program in pursuit. Williams learned technique from Richardson, where to place your hands, how to move your hips, your feet.
“Then,” Richardson said, “he became truly great.”
Williams was great but he was never full of himself in high school. He didn’t seek attention. He wasn’t a social media diva. Williams sent one tweet in high school. That was when he gave a verbal commitment to play at Alabama.
Williams graduated early at Folsom and enrolled early at Alabama for a head start. There, he jotted down three goals: To start, to become an All-American, to graduate in three years. He accomplished all of that in his time there, starting with becoming the first freshman to start at tackle for any Nick Saban-coached team.
Williams was the first offensive lineman off the board in that 2019 draft. He was the highest area drafted player since defensive lineman Reggie Rogers of since-closed Notre Del Rio went seventh to the New York Giants in 1987.
Williams never forgot his Folsom roots
Williams didn’t play his rookie year in the NFL, sidelined by a shoulder injury that required surgery. He has started the last two seasons, helping transform the worst team in the NFL in 2019 to the Super Bowl. The Bengals this year won their first playoff game since the 1990 season.
Williams never forgot his Folsom roots. He invited Richarson and wife Kelly to the NFL draft green room. They couldn’t make it, but they were there in spirit. Williams visited Taylor before the draft, and the two spirited off to a local taco joint, where Williams told Taylor that maybe it’s wise if they go Dutch, pay their own.
Taylor wouldn’t hear of it. So Williams scarfed down 15 tacos with the same manner in which he bullied a blocking sled while never breaking stride as they talked about life and football.
Williams has long been known for his pragmatic approach to the game. After the Bengals surrendered nine sacks in a playoff win over the Tennessee Titans this postseason, Williams told the media, “It’s never a good feeling as an O-line to give up a number of sacks in the game, but we don’t really swing emotionally based on the discourse publicly. We know what our job is. We show up every day and focus in meetings and grind it out at practice to be better on Sunday, so that’s our mindset this week. It’s our mindset every week, and that’s what we’re going to do.”
Williams is this area’s all-time greatest player
How good and great was Williams in high school, and what’s his lasting legacy? Has the word great come up yet?
Area coaches rank Williams as the area’s all-time best at any position. That’s how Del Oro assistant coach Bill Sherman sized it up two years ago, concluding, “he’s the greatest player in Sacramento-area history.”
Back to you, Richardson and Taylor.
“Jonah’s the most dominating high school player I’ve ever been around,” Taylor said this week. Said Richardson, “100 percent. True.”
I have covered regional prep football since 1984, including since 1989 at The Bee. Williams tops my list of all-time prep greats. In 2000, we did an all-time area list of prep football greats for The Bee, spanning five decades. Tedy Bruschi of Roseville High topped it. He went on to set NCAA sack records at Arizona before winning three Super Bowls at linebacker with the New England Patriots.
Quarterback Jake Browning also makes any short list of all-time greats. He and Williams were cornerstones on Folsom’s 16-0 team in 2014, the region’s greatest club that had 16 running-clock games and set a state record with 915 points. Browning is now employed by the Bengals as a practice-squad player. He set national prep marks for touchdowns in a season (91 in 2014) and career (229). Also on the Bengals is defensive back Trayvon Henderson, the one-time Grant star.
For all of his greatness in the trenches, the enduring theme of Williams is the man. He is polite. He is giving. He is a scholar who enjoys cooking and traveling.
“An even better guy than he is a player,” Richardson said.
Said Taylor, “Always so humble. Just a class guy.”
Football junkies and lifers, Richardson and Taylor will soak in the Super Bowl, eyes locked in on the left tackle who has lived up to his legacy.
In the trenches
A peek at other big-time Sacramento-area offensive linemen since the mid 1980s:
Mike Flanagan, Rio Americano, 1990: Prep All-American who became an All-American at UCLA and played in the NFL from 1996-2007.
Kolton Miller, Roseville, 2013: Roseville’s greatest player since Tedy Bruschi in 1990, Miller got better by the year, leading to his first-round selection with the Raiders, where he still starts.
Steven Moore, Elk Grove, 2012: Helped elevate Elk Grove back to powerhouse status then was a three-year starter at Cal, his trench work as good as his hearty beard.
Chad Overhauser, Rio Americano, 1991: Towering at 6-6, he was a UCLA All-American who was on three NFL rosters over five seasons.
Darrin Paulo, Grant, 2015: A prep All-American who excelled at Utah and is with the Detroit Lions, talking to current Grant players in offseason about what it takes to achieve.
Jonah Williams, Folsom, 2015: This region’s all-time No. 1 player, according to those who faced him and coached him; starred at Alabama, first-rounder by Bengals and in the Super Bowl.
Paul Wulff, Davis, 1985: Learned to longsnap as his prep coach Dave Whitmire assured him it could lead to a scholarship, and it did to Washington State, where Wulff later worked as head coach.