Sam
Williams.
Sam
Williams.
Ole Miss· 6'4"· 261 lb· 4.46s 40
"The most explosive first step in a thin edge class, attached to a one-year sack total and an off-field file: Williams was a bet that snap timing and length would eventually grow a rush plan."Pre-draft read
Long, twitchy edge rusher who played mostly as a hand-in-the-dirt defensive end in Ole Miss's four-man front and won with get-off. Williams times the snap as well as anyone in the class, and the first three steps put tackles on their heels before the rush plan even matters. His counter is a long-arm to a rip, and he keeps his pads under the punch when he commits to it.
The second gear is the closing burst — he covers ground laterally to run down scrambling quarterbacks and finished 2021 with four forced fumbles because he attacks the ball at contact. Against the run he is more of an athlete than a technician, prone to getting reached when he plays high. The signature is disruption in bursts rather than a steady, every-down presence.
Attacking four-man front that lets a designated rusher pin his ears back from a wide alignment on passing downs.
Year 1: third-down sub rusher on a rotation of four. Ceiling: 10-sack starting end in a one-gap front that hides his run defense.
A two-gap 3-4 that asks him to read, hold the point against down blocks and play with patience instead of firing off the ball.
His value is snap-timing and length; take away the free run and there is not much technique underneath.
Sam Williams 2021 Highlights | Ole Miss EDGE
Breakout senior season: snap-timing wins, long-arm rips and strip attempts against SEC tackles.
Sam Williams Ole Miss Highlights
Career compilation showing his development from rotational transfer to full-time edge rusher.
Sam Williams 2019 Highlights | Ole Miss
First season in Oxford, where the explosiveness was already obvious in a smaller role.
Williams was the most explosive one-year producer in a thin edge class, and also the pick that required the most work off the field. A junior-college transfer who arrived in Oxford in 2019, he needed three seasons to become a full-time problem, and the senior year finally matched the traits.
The 2021 tape is the case: 57 tackles, 16 tackles for loss, 12.5 sacks and four forced fumbles in thirteen games against SEC tackles, plus a 33-yard fumble return for a touchdown. Everything came off the same base — an elite first step and length used to knock the tackle's outside hand away. What did not show up was a developed counter tree. When the get-off was neutralized, the rush too often stalled into a bull rush he could not finish, and his run defense was inconsistent when he had to hold an edge.
He was suspended for the 2020 offseason after a sexual battery charge; the case was dismissed in September 2020 and he was reinstated, but teams still had to make their own judgment. Boards had a second-round grade on the traits with the character work as a separate question. Dallas, after losing an edge rusher in free agency, took him at 56 and said publicly it had investigated the allegations thoroughly.
- 01
Elite get-off
Times the snap better than almost anyone in the class and puts tackles into recovery mode within three steps, which is the trait that created most of his 12.5-sack senior season.
- 02
Length used well
Long arms knock the tackle's outside hand away and let him keep his frame clean, turning the long-arm to rip into a repeatable win on obvious passing downs.
- 03
Ball attacker
Four forced fumbles as a senior plus a 33-yard fumble return score; he goes for the strip at contact instead of settling for the tackle.
- 04
Closing burst
Chases plays down from the back side and runs down scrambling quarterbacks, which shows up as pressure numbers well above his sack total.
- 05
Late-blooming arrow
Went from a rotational junior-college transfer to an SEC sack leader in three years, and the improvement curve was still climbing at the time of the draft.
- 01
No counter plan
When the first step does not win, the rush stalls into an unfinished bull rush; he lacks a developed inside move or a second effort with technique behind it.
- 02
Run defense
Plays too high against down blocks and gets reached on the edge, which limits him to sub packages until his pad level and hand placement improve.
- 03
One-year producer
Two seasons of four to six sacks preceded the breakout, so the sample supporting a second-round grade was essentially thirteen games.
- 04
Off-field question
A 2020 sexual battery charge, later dismissed, cost him an offseason and forced every team to run its own investigation before assigning a grade.
— — — positional median (p50)
- 40 yd
- 4.46sp50
- Vertical
- 32.5inp50
- Broad jump
- 123inp50
- Three-cone
- —s
- Shuttle
- —s
- Bench
- —rep
| Yr | Team | G | Tkl | Sk | Int | PD | FF |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | Ole Miss | 12 | 38 | 6 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2020 | Ole Miss | 10 | 39 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| 2021 | Ole Miss | 13 | 57 | 12.5 | 0 | 1 | 4 |
| Career | — | 35 | 134 | 22.5 | 1 | 1 | 6 |
cfbstats verified 2020 (10 G, 39 tackles, 8 TFL, 4.0 sacks, 1 FF) and 2021 (13 G, 57 tackles, 16 TFL, 12.5 sacks, 1 PD, 4 FF, 1 FR); 2019 from the StatMuse season table. StatMuse lists a smaller 2021 line (39 combined tackles, 10 TFL) and therefore a 116-tackle, 27-TFL career total; the cfbstats figures are used here and the discrepancy is unresolved.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
A traits-based second-rounder who settles in as a sub-package rusher without ever taking a starting job.
The ceiling is a long, explosive rotational end who grows into a starting job and posts eight to ten sacks.
The floor is a day-two edge whose lack of a rush plan keeps him buried on the depth chart and out of a role.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
Sam Williams has played his entire career with the Dallas Cowboys, contributing as a rotational defensive end and special teams player. He has shown flashes as a pass rusher.
Dallas used him exactly as the tape suggested: a rotational sub-package rusher behind an established starting duo, never an every-down end. He gave them 4.0 sacks and a forced fumble across fifteen rookie games, then 4.5 sacks in a full seventeen-game second season as the third rusher. The third year never happened — he tore the ACL and MCL in his left knee at training camp in July 2024 and missed the entire season. He returned in 2025 for all seventeen games but the rush production did not come back with him, just 1.0 sack and a forced fumble in a reduced role. Four years in, he has 9.5 career sacks and has never started consistently.
The evaluation got the trait right and the projection wrong. The first step was real and it produced NFL pressure immediately, but the missing counter tree was the more important note on the page, and nothing in four professional seasons suggested it developed. He also never got the runway a second-round pick usually gets, first because Dallas already had two starters ahead of him and then because of the knee. For pick 56, a rotational rusher with 9.5 sacks through four seasons is a miss, even if he was never a disaster.
Data note: Imported from Wikipedia 2022 NFL draft player selections table.