Quinnen Williams spent 13 days as a Dallas Cowboy before he got to suit up for a game. Once he hit the field, though, the wait to make his first impact on a revamped Dallas defense was considerably shorter.
Just six minutes into his first contest wearing the star, the three-time Pro Bowler combined with fellow defensive tackle Kenny Clark to bring down Raiders quarterback Geno Smith. The split sack helped ruin a red-zone drive for the Las Vegas offense and forced them to settle for a field goal.
That three-point lead would be as close as the Raiders would be all night, eventually falling by a 33-16 score. For the Cowboys, it was a dominant performance on a difficult night that not only showcased Dallas’s new personnel, it also offered a promising glimpse of what the unit could look like moving forward.
“Really, really proud of that group and what they’ve had to go through,” Cowboys head coach Brian Schottenheimer said from the podium in his postgame remarks. “It was pretty cool to see those guys really step up and the fire that they played with tonight.”
In the team’s first outing since the tragic passing of second-year end Marshawn Kneeland, his defensive linemates rallied in a game they played for him. Four sacks. Eleven QB hits. A total of 27 rushing yards allowed.
Schottenheimer put it simply.
“The energy of the entire group was tangible.”
And Williams, the 300-pound behemoth who was acquired from the Jets in a trade right at the Nov. 4 deadline, proved to be a spark plug for those around him.
“Definitely setting the tone in a lot of ways: the way he was rushing, the way he was getting up the field, attacking,” fellow tackle Osa Odighizuwa explained. “It’s great to have a guy like that on the field.”
“I’ve never played with a front like this, admitted Clark, the tackle who came to Dallas just prior to Week 1 in the Micah Parsons-Green Bay trade. “It’s going to make all of us better. The front is nasty. I’m loving it.”
“It looked like a magic show,” linebacker DeMarvion Overshown said following his first game back from injury in nearly a year. “As soon as you’d see one do something, there was another one. I feel like they kept pulling tricks out of their bag.”
And the Williams Effect should only increase with time and familiarity. He played just 55% of the defense’s snaps against Las Vegas, but rookie end Donovan Ezeiruaku sees how he’s already raising the bar for the entire unit, which collectively had been ranked at or near the bottom in most key categories.
“[The defensive ends] have got to do a better job ourselves, capitalizing on one-on-ones on the outside,” Ezeiruaku said Monday night. “But we see what [the tackles] can do, and it’s going to be a very, very, very special couple of weeks.”
Williams, however, isn’t so quick to buy into the theory that he alone is any sort of catalyst for the Dallas defense.
“I don’t think one guy can change anything,” he said after his Cowboys debut. “I think the team itself, the guys around you, all 11 on the field, [and] the coaching staff makes the difference. One man don’t do nothing. It’s not golf. It’s not tennis. Everybody on this team has to do a job, and everybody in this organization has to do a job to the best of our abilities to win football games.”
“I’m playing with some great individuals: Kenny Clark, Osa, you got Eze, you got [Jadeveon Clowney] over there. The guys around me are playing unbelievable. It helps me; all I needed to do is just do my job.”
Williams did that, to be sure, ending the night with 1.5 sacks, recording five hits on Raiders passer Geno Smith, and adding four total tackles with one for loss.
For a Cowboys team still hoping to salvage the season and make an improbable run at a playoff bid, Williams being a force multiplier for a suddenly fearsome defensive line is a sign of good things to come.
“You can feel the difference. Like, not getting as many double-teams,” said Odighizuwa. “Feels great.”
“When you’ve got guys like that, teams have got to gameplan for [them]. They can’t bypass those guys,” explained Overshown. “Those two or three O-linemen blocking three guys, four guys, I get to run around and play football.”
“We talk about owning the line of scrimmage,” offered Schottenheimer. “I think we took a huge step forward in that regard on the defensive side of the ball.”
Quinnen Williams may not believe he’s the miracle ingredient, but his teammates and coaches seem pretty convinced they know what the main difference was in Week 11.
“Q is really good,” Schottenheimer confirmed with a grin. “He’s really a good football player. We should keep him.”
Follow Cowboys Wire on Facebook to join in on the conversation with fellow fans!
This article originally appeared on Cowboys Wire: ‘It looked like a magic show’: Cowboys marvel over Quinnen Williams’ effect on D-line
Reporting by Todd Brock, Cowboys Wire / Cowboys Wire
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
