FOXBORO -- When the Patriots trade up in the draft, it's because they have a player in mind they believe is worth the move.
Joejuan Williams, the 6-foot-4 corner out of Vanderbilt, certainly looks like he has the potential to be worth the price of climbing up in the second round (In this case, the climb meant parting with picks No. 56 and 101 -- a late-second and a late-third rounder to the Rams to get the 45th spot).
In a league where the receivers seem to be getting bigger and stronger every year, where tight ends are often just receivers with more muscle and slower 40 times, Williams looks like he could have an immediate role.
Williams clocked a 4.55-second 40, which may have forced him down the boards of some teams, but he also ran a 4.07-second short shuttle -- well within the range of the short-shuttle times highly-drafted Patriots corners ran in previous years. That start-stop quickness shows up on tape against the likes of long, powerful wideouts like Ole Miss' AJ Brown and Notre Dame's Miles Boykin.
Were those performances perfect? Not exactly. There were points where he could be out-leveraged and taken advantage of by accurate throws. There were points where his aggressiveness as a tackler worked against him and contributed to misses.
But he showed good awareness when playing the ball in the air, breaking back toward the ball without barreling through his opponents. He was second-team All-SEC last year with four picks and 14 pass breakups in 13 starts. But he's more than a cover man. He clearly was not afraid to join the fray as a tackler -- a trait that could allow the Patriots to play Williams in the box as they do so frequently with safety Patrick Chung.
Bill Belichick was very up-front in his pre-draft press conference at one point -- candor that might've hinted at this pick weeks before it was made.
He admitted that the team analyzes its shortcomings at the end of the year -- part of the self-scouting process that occurs throughout the course of a given season -- and works to address those however they can so that they don't continue to be stung by the same issues the following season. That's not news, but the positions he highlighted maybe should've raised an eyebrow.
"I think those are things that you have to be mindful of," Belichick said. "I’d say usually they have to hit you in the face. Usually, you sit there at the end of the year and say, well, we had a lot of trouble blocking this player or defending this type of player or whatever it is, and then that kind of becomes a need for you. Either we have to change our scheme to do this, which probably isn’t that easy or you would have already done it, or we have to have another certain type of player on our roster that we don’t currently have that has a certain type of skill set.
"So, this is another year where there’s a lot of big receivers – 6-4, 225, 230, whatever they are – I mean, somebody’s going to have to cover those guys one of these days."
And there are, of course, big tight ends as well. Last season in New England's bye week, we took a close look at a few of the areas the Patriots may try to address in their week off to look inward. One of them? Defending tight ends in the red zone.
To that point in the year, no team had faced as many red zone targets sent toward tight ends (17) and the Titans had just gashed the Patriots with players named Jonnu Smith and Anthony Firsker.
Belichick added Obi Melifonwu midseason to potentially help his defense cover big bodies -- and Melifonwu saw reps against Vikings tight end Kyle Rudolph -- but maybe Joejuan Williams is the long-term answer for those types of assignments.
His size, quickness, instincts to the play the ball and fearless on-the-field demeanor would serve him well in those spots.
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