The 49ers top head honchos talk about their first round pick, Mykel Williams
San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan and John Lynch spoke to the media after their first-round selection to discuss Mykel Williams. Lynch was asked why te team picked Williams and what stood out about him:
“Everything. I think the totality of the whole process. The film is very impressive. Mykel is a big, good looking kid in every way. He’s big, he’s tall, he’s long. He’s a great athlete. He’s tough, he’s smart. He can play outside. He can play inside. He does all those things. I think the toughness, he played through an ankle injury last year. Missed two games, but a high-ankle sprain can be a tough deal. To only miss two games and play as well as he did. He came through here on a 30 visit. We really got a feel for this kid. And I just think that, all of that led us to this guy is a Niner. He fits who we are. Our culture. And we pounced when he was there.”
Laughing, Lynch said the 49ers tried to trade up for Williams: “Thank god they took someone else when they picked because he was still there. So, we’re happy.”
The follow-up question asked was whether Williams was who the 49ers had in mind at No. 11, and if not, who else they had in mind. Here’s Shanahan:
“Yeah, definitely. That’s the hardest thing. You have to have a number of guys who you really want. But you definitely have to know who you’re going to take first. My wife and kids, I told them who I wanted last night. I trust them. None of you guys know them. I told them Mykel, but I don’t think he’s gonna be there.
So I tell them other people who we might think about. My wife calls me this morning that she just read a mock draft that he’s going No. 28, and she was worried that we were just dead wrong about everything. But we had a good idea that he was going earlier. But you don’t actually know. We thought about going up. John definitely attempted for a sec, and I was like, ‘good decision, I think we should definitely go.’
But they shot him down, so we were ready to watch him go away. And we were ready to go to our second and third. But he didn’t go where we thought he was going to go. And he got to our pick, and I go, ‘I can’t believe you tried to trade. Of course he was coming.’ That’s the hard thing about the draft. You never know. We stuck there and waited for our guy, and got the guy we wanted.”
The 49ers might have given up a valuable pick when they didn’t need to. There was a report that Carolina was looking to trade the 8th overall pick. Perhaps that’s who the mystery team that shot them down was. The Panthers ended up taking a wide receiver and would have risked the Dallas Cowboys or another team jumping them had they moved back to 11.
Kris Kocurek told Lynch that Williams is the best edge setter in college football and that he’s the best edge setter in this draft class. Lynch said, “If that’s the premise of what we want in an edge guy, then he does it extremely well.”
Lynch spoke about Williams’ age:
“Him being 20 years old, but having a maturity and a way about him when he came through here. We felt that. We felt his presence. They talk about it at Georgia. His leadership and all those things, you could feel it. He just, very comfortable under his own skin. That was impressive when you put it together with his film.”
How about Williams as a pass rusher? Here’s Lynch:
“I think he has a lot of upside. His skill set is a guy that can rush with power. He’s a good enough athlete. He’s got some wiggle. He’s extremely proficient when they run games, for that big of an athlete, he’s a really good stop-start. Sometimes, those guys can get going, but when a quarterback steps up, they can’t change direction. I think he can do that really well.
He’s got a lot of attributes. He’s obviously got to come put them together. But we’re excited to work with him.”
Shanahan believes Williams progressed as the year went along:
“It’s awesome that the more you watch him, the better he gets. When you see how he uses his length and his arms and stuff, that stuff doesn’t jump off the tape with everyone. When you first turn on Nick [Bosa], when he was at Ohio State, you don’t appreciate him the first time you watch him. But the more you watch him, the more you realize how much of a ninja he is with his hands and hand placement. That’s how Mykel grows on you, too.
‘Man, this guy, I knew he was good, but he’s a lot better than I thought. And they love him over guards. But he can also do it outside just as well. So to have that versatility in two areas that can help us a lot, to be as physical in the run game, that’s why he was the guy we were hoping for for a while.”
Shanahan said he wasn’t sure about Williams’ stats.
“If you see something that’s alarming, and there are a bunch of stats that match up when you watch the tape, those questions don’t come up, and if it’s something alarming, and there are a bunch of stats that match it, it all stacks up. But when you watch the tape, those questions don’t come up.
That’s not what I see. I see a guy that’s really hard to block in the run game and in the pass game. He’s hard to block for tackles, hard to block for guards. I think that’s what’s really cool with college football now. Half these guys that come out, the majority of these guys are 24-25. We have a 20-year-old who looks like a man on tape. To look like a man on tape when you’re going against 25-year-olds is a big difference.
I’m excited to see him in the NFL five years from now when he’s only 25.”
How much did Williams’s ankle injury factor into his lack of production? How much more difficult did that make his evaluation process? Here’s Lynch:
“I think when a guy as a body of work, you almost appreciate that. You don’t like that he had an ankle injury, but you give him a ton of credit that, Matt Barrows, you just mentioned Will Muschamp, Will just texted me, ‘This guy plays..he’s tough as you know what..this guy played through an ankle injury the entire year, and missed two games. He’s tough, he’s smart, and he’s got huge upside.’
All the things we saw, and when you see the previous years and all that, and he’s doing great. Just had a Pro Day, and looked really good. Our docs checked him out.”
Shanahan continued:
“High ankle sprains are as nagging of an injury as you can have. Most people are out a month with them. But when you’re out a month, they still linger all year. So when you watch his tape, and I watched it before I see everyone, especially the top guys, then I get in there, and I hear some of the stuff. I liked him not knowing that.
Then you hear that stuff. That says a lot about his character, with how tough he plays. He only missed two games because of it. But also the fact, he’s not healthy either. I know how much high-ankle sprains linger. So when you see that and when you know he’s playing through that, I look at it like a huge bonus.”
Lynch said the 49ers are excited to pair Williams with Bosa, but they’re not finished along the defensive line.
“We still need more. We got 10 more picks, and he won’t be the only D-lineman. We’ve got to keep going. We always talked about how they’re kind of the engine that stirs our defense. We’ve got some work to do. We know that. But this guy is a great core piece moving forward and a great bookend with Bosa, who also has the versatility, along with Yetur [Gross-Matos], to kind of play throughout the line, so I think that’s kind of exciting with all of the different combinations we can have.”
We’ll talk about the best players available later this morning.