This captaincy thing is still somewhat new to defensive line pillar Quinnen Williams. But like all the other challenges he's faced as a Jet, he's taking the role head-on and doing it his way.
"I'm not vocal at all as a leader," Williams said before Friday's practice and the Jets' flight to San Francisco to take on the 49ers on Monday night. "I'm more of a leader by example. I'm more of a guy that I'm going to go as hard as I can and expect everybody to see that example and do the same thing."
The example has been exhilarating so far. Williams, beginning his sixth season in green and white. He's compiled 30. 5 sacks 74 QB hits in his past four seasons, and has been named an AFC Pro Bowler twice and an All-Pro first-teamer and the Curtis Martin Team MVP after the 2023 campaign.
Leadership has been another of those tools he's added to his game. Head coach Robert Saleh's Jets started last season with three permanent captains and a fourth named game by game But when Rodgers went down with his injury early in last year's opener, Williams moved in as a season-long captain. This year, instead of three permanent captains, Saleh has four, and Williams is one of the quartet along with Rodgers, LB C.J. Mosley and P Thomas Morstead.
"It was amazing, man," he said of hearing he'll be wearing the "C" from Game 1 this season, "just for the guys to see my leadership, to trust me to be a leader, to trust in my voice, to trust in the things I do every single day to help lead them in the right direction.
"Like I was telling the D-linemen, captain, it's just a title. But each and everyone else has to be a captain and a leader in a certain way. To push each other in the right direction to get this team to go to where we want to go to is the main goal."
"Q" may not be a traditional rah-rah captain, but he's been surrounded by plenty of football folks who sent leadership lessons his way for the better part of a decade. He began by naming the players on the Jets that he's learned from — including exemplars from the other side of the ball as well as from the defense.
"I've been super-comfortable, especially having guys like Tyron [Smith], and Morgan [Moses] back," he said, beginning with the Jets' new/old bookend offensive tackles. "C.J. Mosley is an unbelievable captain, learning from him. And you've got Aaron Rodgers, who is a one-of-a-kind leader, man. I'm just learning from these guys, asking these guys questions on how to handle certain situations, how to lead, how to change guys' mindsets, different things like that."
Then there is the recent past and one interior DL who was a Jets stalwart for four-plus seasons, including the first 22 games of Williams' Jets career in 2019-20.
"Oh, for sure. We had guys like Steve McLendon, who everybody knows," he said. "He was an unbelievable leader, an unbelievable voice, an unbelievable captain. And he helped me instill different things in me to this day that I try to use and try to go by."
And going even further back, Williams tips his hat to legendary Alabama HC, Nick Saban, who helped prepare Quinnen to rise to being the third overall pick of the '19 draft by the Jets: "I try to use a lot of the leadership stuff that he taught me and go by it that way."
But there should be no worries that Williams' game will suffer as he works his way up the leadership ladder. He still has double-teams to defeat, new and old teammates to help him do it, and goals he wants himself and his team to achieve, beginning as soon as Monday night in San Fran.
"I just enjoy playing football itself," he said. "I enjoy playing great talent, I enjoy playing great teams, No matter if it's Week 1 or Week 17. So going against a great group of guys that you're a huge fan of like Christian McCaffrey and Nick Bosa and all those guys on that side of the ball is an unbelievable task and a challenge.
"So I just want to continue to be a great leader, continue to be the person I am. And to get to that point, I feel like I'm going in the right direction to be that dominant player and that game-changer. I'm going to just continue to scratch and claw to get closer and closer to that player that I really want to be."
