Joshua
Williams.
Joshua
Williams.
Fayetteville St.· 6'3"· 195 lb· 4.53s 40
"The only Division II player at the Senior Bowl, a 6-foot-3 press corner with rare length whose evaluation was entirely a bet on traits over a body of work nobody could properly grade."Pre-draft read
Williams is a 6-foot-3 press corner who plays to his length. He gets hands on receivers at the line, matches feet and hands in his jam and uses a smooth backpedal with low pad level rather than a grabby style. At the catch point his wingspan takes away the back-shoulder throw that smaller corners can only contest by fouling.
He is a willing tackler who puts his face on the ball and chops ball carriers down at the thigh, which is rarer than it should be for a long corner. The limitations are the ones length usually brings: he gets high coming out of breaks and gives up separation on quick in-breaking routes, and he struggles to shed a receiver's block when he is engaged in run support. His speed is ordinary rather than elite.
A press-man defense that lets long corners jam at the line and play with a safety over the top rather than asking them to mirror in off coverage.
Year 1: fourth corner and special teams contributor. Ceiling: a boundary starter who erases jump-ball receivers inside the 20.
A heavy off-zone scheme built on driving on the short throw, where his high transition out of breaks turns every curl and comeback into a completion.
He needs a defensive staff patient enough to develop a Division II technique base against NFL route runners.
Fayetteville State CB Joshua Williams Highlights
The Division II tape that put him on NFL boards: press jams, length at the catch point and three senior-year picks.
Joshua Williams Senior Highlights
Player-posted senior reel covering his 2021 season at Fayetteville State.
Joshua Williams Highlights | Draft Profile 2022
Pre-draft cut-up focused on the press technique and the transition questions out of breaks.
Williams was the highest-rated HBCU prospect in the class and the only Division II player invited to the Senior Bowl, where he did not look out of place. He was the first Fayetteville State player drafted in 46 years, which is both a compliment and a summary of the evaluation problem: there was almost no comparable competition on his tape.
What could be measured was excellent. He is 6-foot-3 with a 6-foot-5 3/4 wingspan, ran 4.53 at the combine with a 36-inch vertical and a 10-foot-4 broad jump, and clocked one of the five fastest max speeds at the Senior Bowl at 21.75 miles per hour, faster than several Power Five skill players in the same practices. The frame and the movement were NFL-caliber on sight.
The projection rested on whether the technique would hold against real receivers. He played press with good hand timing, but he had never been asked to carry an NFL-level route runner down the field, and the stiffness out of breaks that Division II slot receivers could not exploit looked likely to matter more later. Kansas City, a team that had rebuilt its secondary in the same draft, bet on the traits at 135.
- 01
Length at the catch point
6-foot-3 with a nearly 6-foot-6 wingspan, which lets him contest back-shoulder and fade throws without needing to grab the receiver.
- 02
Press technique
matches feet and hands in his jam, shoots hands to disrupt the route stem and keeps leverage rather than panicking and opening his hips early.
- 03
Athletic testing
a 4.53 forty, a 36-inch vertical and a 10-foot-4 broad jump, plus a Senior Bowl top speed of 21.75 miles per hour, the fifth fastest recorded there.
- 04
Willing tackler
attacks ball carriers low and gets them on the ground, showing run-support toughness that many long, press-first corners never develop.
- 05
Ball production
five interceptions and 22 passes defensed in 28 career games, including three picks and nine breakups in his final season at Fayetteville State.
- 01
Rises out of breaks
gets high in his transition, which surrenders separation on comebacks and quick in-breaking routes against sharper professional route runners.
- 02
Level of competition
Division II receivers never stressed his technique, so the entire evaluation relied on projection and two weeks of Senior Bowl practices.
- 03
Block shedding
struggles to disengage once a receiver gets into his frame in the run game, a strength issue that shows up on perimeter runs and screens.
- 04
Ordinary long speed
fast enough but not a true burner, meaning he must win with the jam and the length rather than by recovering when he loses the release.
— — — positional median (p50)
- 40 yd
- 4.53sp50
- Vertical
- 36inp50
- Broad jump
- 124inp50
- Three-cone
- —s
- Shuttle
- —s
- Bench
- —rep
| Yr | Team | G | Tkl | Sk | Int | PD | FF |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | Fayetteville State | 9 | 16 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2019 | Fayetteville State | — | 34 | 0 | 0 | 13 | 0 |
| 2021 | Fayetteville State | 9 | 31 | 0 | 3 | 9 | 0 |
| Career | — | 28 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 22 | 0 |
Fayetteville State is a Division II program and is not covered by cfbstats, and the school's online statistics archive does not publish these seasons, so the figures come from his official NFL team biography and from Fayetteville State's own communications. The career line — 28 games across 2018, 2019 and 2021, four tackles for loss, five interceptions and 22 passes defensed — is the official team biography; the 2020 season was canceled. The passes defensed (13 in 2019 plus nine in 2021) sum exactly to the career 22. Season tackle totals of 16, 34 and 31 sum to 81 while the official biography lists 79 career tackles, so the career tackle figure is left unverified rather than reconciled by guesswork. Games played in 2019 and the season split of his five interceptions before 2021 were never published and are shown as unverified rather than derived by subtraction.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
Rotational NFL corner who plays meaningful snaps for years without locking down a full-time job.
Mid-round corner who grows into a multi-year starter with a second contract on the open market.
Developmental corner whose career lives on special teams and practice squad cycles.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
He played immediately and he has kept playing. Williams appeared in all 17 games as a rookie with four starts, recorded 38 tackles, seven passes defensed and an interception, and won a Super Bowl ring. He then became a fixture of Kansas City's rotation and special teams: 16 games in 2023 with 18 tackles and five breakups on the way to Super Bowl LVIII, then a career-high six starts and 30 tackles with six passes defensed in 2024, before a 2025 season spent almost entirely on special teams with just 17 defensive snaps.
Across four Kansas City seasons he played 65 games with 12 starts, 90 tackles, 18 passes defensed and 10 playoff appearances including three Super Bowls. He signed with Tennessee as an unrestricted free agent on March 12, 2026 and was placed on injured reserve on August 30. For a Division II corner taken 135th, four seasons of rotational defense and core special teams with two rings is a clear return; the ceiling as a full-time starting corner never arrived, and the break quickness scouts flagged is the reason.