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The Shawn Williams bandwagon

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  • WWFGD
  • Veteran
  • Posts: 931
This kid looks like the real deal. If we can not resign Goldson perhaps we draft this kid.
No thanks. I like him as a player, but he's more of a strong safety type than anything else, a role Whitner is filling ably at the moment. I'll take his teammate Bacarri Rambo who is the more accomplished coverage safety and ballhawk.
  • sfout
  • Veteran
  • Posts: 6,443
Originally posted by Phoenix49ers:
No thanks. I like him as a player, but he's more of a strong safety type than anything else, a role Whitner is filling ably at the moment. I'll take his teammate Bacarri Rambo who is the more accomplished coverage safety and ballhawk.

This. If Williams ever plays FS he would be the Ryan Clark to the an SS like Troy Polamalu(ex this year would be Kenny Vaccaro who is capable of playing both positions).

All comes down to scheme, as Polamalu plays SS but makes more ballhawk moves then FS Ryan Clark, who simply lays the wood on people. But in any other scheme Polamalu would play FS and Clark would be SS.

Williams COULD play FS but will he effective? My gut says no because as they even say he only has "Adequate to good" hip movement. Remember the last high round safety we drafted with adequate to good hip movement? His name is Taylor Mays and we traded him for a 2 years removed conditional 7th after spending a high 2nd on him. Experimenting with players at such high picks is not a smart move, especially in our scheme were our safeties play key roles in the entire scheme.
[ Edited by sfout on Dec 19, 2012 at 7:27 PM ]
Originally posted by sfout:
This. If Williams ever plays FS he would be the Ryan Clark to the an SS like Troy Polamalu(ex this year would be Kenny Vaccaro who is capable of playing both positions).

All comes down to scheme, as Polamalu plays SS but makes more ballhawk moves then FS Ryan Clark, who simply lays the wood on people. But in any other scheme Polamalu would play FS and Clark would be SS.

Williams COULD play FS but will he effective? My gut says no because as they even say he only has "Adequate to good" hip movement. Remember the last high round safety we drafted with adequate to good hip movement? His name is Taylor Mays and we traded him for a 2 years removed conditional 7th after spending a high 2nd on him. Experimenting with players at such high picks is not a smart move, especially in our scheme were our safeties play key roles in the entire scheme.

I do think that Williams could be a good fit for a team that needs a good strong safety but he's primarily a run-stopping/WHAM kind of guy that likes to hit, he'd be serviceable in coverage in the pro's but not to any great degree. He actually reminds me a lot of former Giants safety SHAUN Williams, who nobody was sure where to really play at and ultimatley he ended up best as a strong safety.

Ideally I'd like to see the 49ers draft a safety that would allow them to move Goldson to strong safety, someone who could cover a lot of ground and allow Goldson to do what he does. Such a combination would make this defense even more effective. Additionally a guy like Rambo also fits this defense because he loves to hit, he comes from all the way across the field just knock the stuffing out of somebody. In college he plays like a rangier version of Goldson.


  • Kolohe
  • Hall of Fame
  • Posts: 67,063
Been on his bandwagon for a while now. But I think some are looking too much into what position he plays, Goldson and Whitner line up at both position at times and so could Williams. Williams has good range and ball skills to do both SS and FS, I remember some said the same thing about Goldson in his second year. But I think we need to go NT and hopefully we can land Kawann Short. If Williams falls to the second by then no doubt its a no brainer.
Originally posted by Kolohe:
Been on his bandwagon for a while now. But I think some are looking too much into what position he plays, Goldson and Whitner line up at both position at times and so could Williams. Williams has good range and ball skills to do both SS and FS, I remember some said the same thing about Goldson in his second year. But I think we need to go NT and hopefully we can land Kawann Short. If Williams falls to the second by then no doubt its a no brainer.

Its not an issue of where a guy is able to line up, its a question of their particular ability. Just because a guy CAN play a certain position doesn't make it ideal. Rambo played free safety because he excelled at deep coverage and now has the Georgia record for all-time interceptions. If I were looking at safety, I'd really only consider guys who can play the centerfielder role,guys like Rambo, Elam and Vaccaro.
I will take either one of the Georgia safeties, but I really hope we resign Goldson.
Been talking about this kid for a while, I want him!!
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