Seahawks Insider: Kasen Williams soars in preseason opener
Aug 14, 2017, 7:05 AM | Updated: Aug 21, 2017, 3:46 pm
Kasen Williams leaps to make one of his four catches in Sunday's preseason opener. (AP)
(AP)
CARSON, Calif. – The biggest takeaway from Kasen Williams’ performance in the Seahawks’ preseason opener?
It was just that: the takeaway.
Williams had already caught three passes along the sideline that had varying degrees of difficulty. It was his catch when he wrestled the ball away from the defender that coach Pete Carroll couldn’t stop talking about afterward.
“He had three great plays,” Carroll said. “Then he had an even better play taking the ball away from the defender. Really fun. He showed what he was all about on that sideline. It was really impressive.”
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This is how it was supposed to be for Williams, who was regarded as one of the top high-school receivers in the country when he graduated from Skyline High School in 2011. As productive as he was for one of the state’s top high-school teams, his marks as a jumper in track and field showed how rare he was as an athlete. He set the state triple-jump record for his classification as a senior. He also won state titles in the long jump and high jump.
To call his football career a disappointment would be unfair. He played four years of college football in the Pac-12, coming back from a nasty leg injury suffered as a sophomore, and he’s played his way from an undrafted rookie who was let go by Cincinnati after a minicamp to being in his third season with the Seahawks.
Sunday’s performance showed that the best may be yet to come for Williams, though.
“I loved his game tonight,” Carroll said. “He lit up our sideline. Not because it was one or two, it was because it was four big, substantial plays.”
Williams had 119 yards receiving, which accounted for 63 percent of Trevone Boykin’s passing total of 189 yards. Not that it’s necessarily new for Williams to soar above the crowd.
“We’ve been seen him do that a lot,” Carroll said. “He has been doing that most of his career. And so to see him have the opportunities, it’s kind of what we talked about, some guys will get the opportunities and whether they seize them or not, he certainly did that today.”
