Quinnen Williams, DT Alabama

Originally posted by gold49digger:

Originally posted by NinerBuff:

Originally posted by gold49digger:
7 more days until either the quinnen wagon or bosa wagon will be super disappointed.

Will anyone really be disappointed with getting a blue chip defensive player? I mean, I want Bosa, but Williams is going to be a great player too.

this is the zone. people will get mad lmao. Even more if we pick Quinnen. But I personally would be okay either way.

Originally posted by Heroism:

Originally posted by gold49digger:
7 more days until either the quinnen wagon or bosa wagon will be super disappointed.

Originally posted by cortana49:

Originally posted by gold49digger:

7 more days until either the quinnen wagon or bosa wagon will be super disappointed.

Nah, I don't think that's the case (on average). We're gonna get a GREAT defensive piece with either one.

Originally posted by Phoenix49ers:

What a moving, inspiring yet sad story but such a great job by @JosinaAnderson - Quinnen Williams is one fine young man. https://t.co/caSE3yEKOI

— Connie Carberg (@ConnieScouts) April 18, 2019

Originally posted by Hysterikal:

Originally posted by cortana49:

Originally posted by gold49digger:
7 more days until either the quinnen wagon or bosa wagon will be super disappointed.

Nah, I don't think that's the case (on average). We're gonna get a GREAT defensive piece with either one.

Will just be a bunch of finger pointing saying "you better be f**king right!"

Originally posted by NinerBuff:

Originally posted by gold49digger:
7 more days until either the quinnen wagon or bosa wagon will be super disappointed.

Will anyone really be disappointed with getting a blue chip defensive player? I mean, I want Bosa, but Williams is going to be a great player too.

Originally posted by cortana49:

Originally posted by Hysterikal:

Originally posted by cortana49:

Originally posted by gold49digger:

7 more days until either the quinnen wagon or bosa wagon will be super disappointed.

Nah, I don't think that's the case (on average). We're gonna get a GREAT defensive piece with either one.

Will just be a bunch of finger pointing saying "you better be f**king right!"

Won't deny that!

Originally posted by zonkers:

Originally posted by Phoenix49ers:

What a moving, inspiring yet sad story but such a great job by @JosinaAnderson - Quinnen Williams is one fine young man. https://t.co/caSE3yEKOI

— Connie Carberg (@ConnieScouts) April 18, 2019

Is it about him and his family losing his mother?

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — While 12-year-old Quinnen Williams watched fireworks explode above him, the secret his mother kept was exposed in an emergency room of a nearby hospital. The cancer she'd beaten five years ago had returned, and Marquischa Henderson Williams hid it from everyone—until Fourth of July night in 2010, when the disease incapacitated her in such a way that her mother rushed her to the ER. "She went in that night," Yvarta Henderson says, "and she never came back home." Quinnen's mother passed away five weeks later, succumbing to a disease she spent months fighting in obscurity, an ironic twist to a message she always told her children: Keep a smile on your face because you never know what someone's going through.

More than eight years later, Quinnen has not overcome her death. He politely declines to discuss it, a deep hurt throbbing inside the 6'4", 300-pound frame of Alabama's starting nose guard. He won't tell you he plays football to make her proud. He won't tell you he scribbles her name on his wrist tape before each game. He won't tell you he's still deep in grief. But he'll show you on Saturdays. He'll use those violent hands to push aside double teams, spin off blocks to gobble up rushers, and move those quick feet to chase down quarterbacks.
Quinnen won't tell you he uses football as an outlet for his tragedy, but he does. There is a quiet catalyst to his vicious sacks, all seven of them, and the team-high 16 tackles for loss, too. There is an impetus behind his meteoric rise from little-known reserve to top-10 draft prospect in the span of a few weeks. There is a deeper reason he'll suit up Saturday in the top-ranked Crimson Tide's SEC championship game against No. 4 Georgia. It is her, Marquischa Henderson Williams, a woman who he resembles, from his chubby cheeks to his big heart, from his dark brown eyes to his aspirations (he wants to, one day, be a school teacher like she was).

"We don't talk about my mom passing so much," says Quinnen's brother Quincy. "We talk about the positive. We talk like she's still alive." Quincy is the oldest of four children Marquischa left behind, a "spokesman of the family," he refers to himself, a mature kid who just completed a five-year career as a linebacker at Murray State. For Quinnen, he's the rock. "Quinnen took it the hardest," Quincy continues. "He was a momma's boy, the one with the big heart. The only person he talks to, really, about it is me. When we do talk, I let him know every single time how proud she is looking down at us."

Quinnen is no longer behind the scenes, as Alabama linebacker Christian Miller puts it. A bench-rider for the last two years, this redshirt sophomore is now a consistent presence behind the line of scrimmage, even calling his sacks on the sideline like Babe Ruth called homers in the box. "He tells us before he comes onto the field," says quarterback Tua Tagovailoa. "'I'm going to get two sacks this series.' And he does it." NFL scouts and opposing coaches have noticed. The guy is nearly averaging as many tackles a game (five) as he averaged snaps (seven) a year ago. "That kid couldn't even get on the field last year," one SEC assistant says. "You look up and nobody in the f------ country can block him." ESPN analyst Todd McShay recently ranked him as the No. 6 prospect in the 2019 NFL draft, and Mel Kiper, earlier this month, suggested he could challenge Ohio State's Nick Bosa and Houston's Ed Oliver for the No. 1 overall pick.

In the summer of 2010, Quinnen and his three siblings endured the anguish of watching their mother succumb to a cancer battle they thought she'd valiantly won for good five years earlier. Over the course of five weeks at Princeton Baptist Medical Center in Birmingham, the family went from having every confidence that Marquischa Henderson Williams would eventually walk out a survivor, to slowly absorbing the realization that, this time, she would not. The breast cancer she'd beaten before had returned and spread to her liver. She died at 38 years old.

It remains an emotional blind spot for the four children she left behind, particularly Quinnen, who lost more than just a mother at the tender age of 12.
"My mom was my best friend. Everything was gone," he said. "I had always been a smiling, outgoing kid, but when she passed, I shut down. I went into a dark mode."

On special days -- Marquischa's birthday, or Mother's Day, or on Aug. 10, the anniversary of her death -- the family openly celebrates her life and impact. But that impact was too great for the passage of time, even at eight years, to heal the wound. The grief process has stalled, and even to this day, Quinnen rarely speaks of those five weeks in the hospital.

"He just doesn't go there," said his father, Quincy Williams Sr.

So Yvarta isn't necessarily waiting on some breakthrough outpouring, some kind of emotional reckoning, to deliver her grandson some closure.
If it comes, it comes.

Meanwhile, there is no arguing with the upshot when it does. Quinnen emerged from relative obscurity to win the Outland Trophy as a redshirt sophomore in 2018, in his first year as a starter, and entered the 2019 NFL Draft with a consensus of draft analysts projecting him as one of the top prizes.
The memory of his mother has powered an explosive career rise for the former Crimson Tide wrecking ball of nose guard, one that has made near-instant believers of NFL scouts in a player who was largely anonymous to them entering the 2018 season.

"You just don't see guys come from as far off the radar as he was, in one year, to being the guy everyone is talking about," said a regional scout for an NFC team.

Like her mother, Marquischa balanced work and home any way she could, often showing up at her sons' football practices to watch, along with a stack of papers to grade at the same time. And when it came to her own children's grades, she did not play.
"We talked a lot, but it was never about football," said Corey Dorsey, who coached Quinnen with the A.G. Gaston Boys and Girls Club Jaguars. "She didn't mind her kids playing sports, but if something wasn't right with their behavior or schoolwork, she didn't care anything about football. Some parents just want to hear that the grade will come up next time around. That wasn't her."

Over the course of an hour last November, discussing his late wife and their children, Quincy Williams laughs out loud just once, It came while recalling Marquischa's reaction when subpar report cards came home. If it included two C's, she would tear it up and let the pieces fall to the child’s feet.

She wasn't afraid to leverage sports participation against academics. Once, she got Quincy Jr.'s report card, laden with too many C's, while he was at practice.
She didn't wait to confront him.
"She comes right on the field, in the middle of practice, walks right by the coach and pulls me off," Quincy Jr. said. "No grades, no football."

"At first, me and my staff walked on egg shells with him," Dorsey said. "We told him he could take some practices off or whatever he needed. Quinnen was having no part of it. I never saw him down. I don't know if he was trying to mask the pain or what, but I never saw any emotion."

One area coaches did notice a difference, however, was in Quinnen's determination to improve. He'd always been a dominant player -- Dorsey's offense sometimes couldn't even run a play in practice because Quinnen could immediately push the center into the quarterback as quick as the snap exchange -- but he began coupling his talent with a voracious appetite for lifting weights. Growing up, it was Quincy Jr., who took the sport more seriously -- "Quincy's motor just ran a little hotter," Quincy Sr. said -- but in the wake of the family's tragic loss of its matriarch, Quinnen's fire for the game began to blaze.

"He was always trying to lift weights, even when the team wasn't," said Green Acres Middle School coach Jermaine Jackson, who coached Quinnen when he was in eighth grade. "I couldn't keep him out of there."

He carried that passion for lifting weights into high school, where Wenonah High coach Ronald Cheatham found him to be one of the hardest offseason workers he'd ever come across. Colleges began showing early interest as the baby fat began to disappear and his body took on a leaner, harder shape.
Inside, however, he was anything but hard.

CLOSELY GUARDED AND FIERCELY PRIVATE, Quinnen typically passes on chances to speak publicly about his mother's death. If it's not an open topic for family, it's certainly not one for strangers.

His thoughts on it are his alone.

But after bounding through a hallway of Alabama's Mal Moore Athletic Complex, jovially greeting a few teammates on a cold November Tuesday, he's been caught in a rare mood to reflect. With some trepidation, he travels into the blind spot long enough to shed some light on why he goes to Birmingham schools and preaches the importance of academics.

Why he still goes back to the Wenonah High locker room to counsel Cheatham's players.

Why he still goes back to the A.G. Gaston Boys and Girls Club to speak to the kids there.

"Nobody knew what I went through. My brothers and sister didn't know, my dad didn't know, my grandmother didn't know. Only I knew what I was going through," Williams said. "So now I look around and think, 'I really don't know what somebody else is going through, so why can't I be that person to make their day brighter?' "

Originally posted by NinerBuff:
Will anyone really be disappointed with getting a blue chip defensive player? I mean, I want Bosa, but Williams is going to be a great player too.

Originally posted by Hysterikal:

Originally posted by cortana49:

Originally posted by Hysterikal:

Originally posted by cortana49:

Originally posted by gold49digger:
7 more days until either the quinnen wagon or bosa wagon will be super disappointed.

Nah, I don't think that's the case (on average). We're gonna get a GREAT defensive piece with either one.

Will just be a bunch of finger pointing saying "you better be f**king right!"

Won't deny that!

And I'll mail Phoenix a "you Pancake eating mother f*****"

Originally posted by NYniner85:
if pressures and sacks were the same thing, Aaron Lynch would still be a niner and AA would be making $100 million

Originally posted by Phoenix49ers:

Originally posted by Hysterikal:

Originally posted by cortana49:

Originally posted by Hysterikal:

Originally posted by cortana49:

Originally posted by gold49digger:
7 more days until either the quinnen wagon or bosa wagon will be super disappointed.

Nah, I don't think that's the case (on average). We're gonna get a GREAT defensive piece with either one.

Will just be a bunch of finger pointing saying "you better be f**king right!"

Won't deny that!

And I'll mail Phoenix a "you Pancake eating mother f*****"

Attach an IHOP gift card to it, that'll really learn me good!

Originally posted by pete98146:

Originally posted by NinerBuff:
Will anyone really be disappointed with getting a blue chip defensive player? I mean, I want Bosa, but Williams is going to be a great player too.

Curious to see the reaction if we pass on Bosa and draft Quinnen? Total meltdown???