After a little bit of a delay between the leak and the announcement (I’m guessing due to background checks), Jafar Williams was hired to replace Holmon Wiggins as wide receivers coach. As a hire, Williams ticks a lot of the boxes I like to see with position coaches. He’s got a nice blend of youth and experience, having been a solid player at Maryland from 2000-2003 who has coached in a lot of different systems, including Pat Fitzgerald’s, Chris Ash’s, and Matt Canada’s.  

I like that he’s a receiver who has spent most of his career coaching receivers. I don’t think there’s a high-level coach out there who can’t book-learn an unfamiliar position, but there’s something to be said for grasping the nuances of the position, and having fast eyes that can decipher technique flaws from what would be blurs of motion to less experienced coaches. I also like that he has some familiarity with the scheme. Probably the biggest resume gap is a lack of NFL experience, which can help with high-profile recruits; Williams went undrafted and bounced around training camps before getting into coaching. I’m not so concerned about the lack of P5 coaching experience, which I think is overblown.

I’ve mentioned before that Justin Fuente and the coaches he brought with him don’t have a great deal of public information on their schemes out there, from Cornelsen on down to Hilgart—these guys didn’t publish much, and they didn’t have many videos or recaps of clinic appearances floating around. Fuente was the exception, but only barely: there was some scheme- and scouting-specific stuff out there from his TCU days, but since then his clinics have covered fairly basic topics, or they’ve been focused on leadership theory. Wiggins has done the local clinic circuits, but you won’t find his stuff in AFCA or Nike Coach of the Year clinics.

Williams changes this up. When he was at Rutgers a few years ago, the team partnered with Championship Productions to release a series of taped clinics covering just about every aspect of offense and defense. Williams had his own hour-long presentation, “Developing Wide Receivers,” and given it was his last time coaching receivers, it will probably be the best representation of his coaching and technique preferences short of watching him in practice this spring. Tech’s receivers had problems with fundamentals—getting off the line, breaking off a route, catching the ball, and blocking—so this presentation caught my attention. 

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