August 15, 2021
After the Philadelphia Eagles' first preseason game against the Pittsburgh Steelers, one of the players I was interested in taking a closer look at was rookie third round DE Milton Williams, the highest of the Birds' 2021 draft picks to play in that game.
You're probably already aware of Williams' profile, but for anyone just catching up, after Williams was drafted — once we got past the dissension in the Eagles' war room after the pick, anyway — the most obvious takeaway from Williams' draft profile was his incredible athletic testing measurables from his pro day workouts.
As you can see, among defensive linemen, Williams was at least in the 90th percentile in the 40 yard dash, vertical jump, 3-cone drill. and 20 yard split. Oh, and he's pretty strong, too, as he put up 34 bench reps at 225 pounds.
Compare him with Miles Sanders, who also tested well as a running back, and here's what you get:
| Athletic measurable | Milton Williams | Miles Sanders |
| Vertical jump | 38 1/2" | 36" |
| Broad jump | 121" | 124" |
| 3-cone drill | 6.96 | 6.89 |
| 20 yard shuttle | 4.33 | 4.19 |
The point we're going a long way to make here is that Williams is an elite athlete, with NFL strength.
Williams started his career at Louisiana Tech at DE, before moving inside for his junior season. In a small sample size (10 games) at DT, playing at an undersized weight somewhere in the 260-270 range, he had 45 tackles (10 for loss) and 4.5 sacks. In his first season in the pros, the Eagles have mostly had Williams playing the same spot as Brandon Graham, at LDE.
Against the Steelers Thursday night, Williams played 23 snaps. If you live in the Philadelphia region, you'll recall that it was like 90 degrees with 5000 percent humidity that night. Jonathan Gannon and defensive line coach Tracy Rocker did not rotate their linemen, as it appeared that they were looking to see how players would hold up during long, tiring series.
As such, there were a handful snaps in which Williams (and other Eagles D-linemen) looked like this (he's No. 93):
However, when Williams was fresh, he was explosive. He mostly squared off against Steelers backup RT Joe Haeg, a five-year vet with 67 games played and 38 starts. In other words, not exactly Anthony Muñoz, but not a slappy either.
Early on, this bull rush jolted Haeg back toward the quarterback. But what's impressive about this rush is that Williams kept his eyes on the quarterback and was able to jump while getting his hand up as Mason Rudolph was throwing. While this pass was completed for a nice gain, it was an example of Williams' combination of power and athleticism.
Later, Williams smoked Haeg to the inside, and beat him with such quickness that the RG was too late to get over on the double-team to stop him. Williams and T.Y. McGill (who put the center on roller skates) were both there for the sack.
And then also, just as a throw in, I enjoyed watching rookie TE Pat Freiermuth getting shoved back a couple yards by Williams on this run play, before Williams disengaged and got in on the tackle. You're not going to be able to block him with a TE.
From what I've seen through the first two weeks of training camp, Williams doesn't appear to be the savviest pass rusher, and he'll have to work on developing a repertoire of pass rush moves. But for now, he's already so strong and explosive that he can come in for a handful of plays at a time and be a disruptive spark plug.
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