STEADYMOBBIN 22 said:
carverlee said:
Yeah, that's the knock on him. He can run and catch but can't stay healthy or pass block.
His pass protection technique and ability is good, better than Randle or Dunbar's. He's had issues learning assignments in new systems like any young back. He destroys those blitzing LBs in Sturm's piece and criticizing him for going low is silly on both occasions. He is a physical player, very willing in protection. With a year to learn reads and assignments, this shouldn't be an issue. If it remains so, then we have a learning problem.
He's been healthy for a long time but then he hasn't been playing in actual games. His last injury was October 2012. It was a shoulder injury. He wasn't fully recovered from the previous season's torn patellar. He was running scared by admission, coming back too soon. Patellars have ended a lot of careers.
“My second year I should not have been out there,” Williams said. “My trainers know it, people on the team know it.
“You can’t run scared, you’re bound to hurt something else. I’m lucky I hurt my shoulder instead of hurting my knee again.”
In part this explains the poor numbers but the story gets uglier. Early in 2013 he pulled himself from practices feeling his knee still wasn't right. MRIs showed nothing wrong.
But the spring of 2013 was, unbeknownst to him, the beginning of the end of his Cardinals’ career. Williams began experiencing pain and inflammation in the “fatty pad” under the patellar tendon in his right knee. He said he had two MRIs between that spring and training camp. Williams said after reading the MRIs the Cardinals told him there wasn’t anything wrong with his knee. The inflammation and pain persisted and Williams had flashbacks to 2012.
About a week into training camp, he pulled himself out of practice.
“I had to take myself out and stop practicing because it was something that I felt could’ve hurt me more if I was out there running timid again,” he said.
You know the coaches thought Williams was scared or damaged and grew frustrated. He admits this in a roundabout way. He started taking injections.
Knowing he needed to return to the field soon, Williams said he resorted to injections. First was cortisone shots, he said, but they didn’t work. Then Williams said he tried plasma injections and eventually nova cane.
He returned to practice Aug. 22, a few days before Arizona hosted San Diego in the third preseason game. Earlier that week, Williams said he was injected with eight shots in one day.
By going easy on his knee he never worked with special teams and this was the staff's reason for keeping him inactive. RBs who aren't bell cows have to play specials, but I suspect the frustrating three year long recovery from the patellar was the bigger issue with his inactivity and eventual release. Dallas also used his inexperience with specials as reason for putting him on the practice squad last year. Otherwise he looked like their best ball carrier not named Murray.
The most interesting bit is late in 2013 when Williams still inactive was finally feeling 100%.
Williams again thought he had a chance to play in Week 13 at Philadelphia when the starting running back was out with a knee injury.
“I asked if I was going to dress out and I was told, ‘I don’t know.’” Williams said. “And I knew that meant no. So, you know, I just took that as I’m fighting a business right now. It has nothing to do with my ability on the football field because I showed these guys every Wednesday, Thursday and Friday what I’m capable of doing. And what I was doing out there, not to toot my own horn, it was filthy. It was filthy and I was back. And everybody knew I was back.
The idea of a fully healthy and filthy 25 year old Ryan Williams is more interesting than any back on Dallas' roster or available on other teams not named Peterson. Pass protection should not be an issue with a year learning the details, and neither should special teams considering the same year and how hard he claims to have worked on them.
Maybe he never was what people like Waldman thought he was. Maybe the injury took that from him. Maybe not.
Good posting.
