Leonard Williams is sore. His body is telling him it doesn’t want to play again already.
So he’s playing tricks to play Sunday then again this Thursday.
Tricks with himself.
“I’ve just trained myself not to listen to my body all the time,” the 11th-year NFL veteran and Pro Bowl defensive end said Tuesday.
It was two days after he had four tackles, shared a sack with Ty Okada, had two quarterback hits and about 100 other bangs playing 45 of 72 defensive snaps in his Seahawks’ 44-13 win over the New Orleans Saints.
It was one day before he and the Seahawks (2-1) fly to Arizona to play again, Thursday against the Cardinals (2-1) in an NFC West game.
Williams said if he did listen to his body after Sunday games, “it’d be hard for me to wake up every day … it would be hard for me to keep pushing through.”
“But that’s the nature of the game,” Williams said. “We know that they (the Cardinals) are doing the same thing, too.”
Yet nobody is doing it like Calais Campbell. Calais Campbell keeps going
Campbell is in his 18th season playing where Williams plays, on the defensive line. Arizona’s six-time Pro Bowl selection and 2017 All-Pro pass rusher with Jacksonville will play his 265th NFL regular season game Thursday against the Seahawks.
Campbell turned 39 this month. He makes Seattle’s 31-year-old guy, who has to trick his mind to get out of bed after games, feel young.
“What year is he in right now, 18?” Williams said, grinning. “I’m pretty sure he’s 39 now.
“I mean, it’s impressive … because when I’m watching film, he’s still one of the top D-linemen in the league right now. So that’s definitely a blessing to be able to play that long and still play at his level.”
That raises the question The News Tribune asked Williams: Does he want to play as long as Campbell has?
“It’s hard to say if I want to play 10 more years right now,” Williams said.
He laughed. It sounded like a you’ve-got-to-be-kidding-me laugh.
The Cardinals drafted Campbell in 2008, in the second round out of the University of Miami. He feels what Williams feels — only with the additional pain of 100 more games and seven more seasons than Williams has played.
“I feel my age,” Campbell told Darren Urban from the Cardinals’ team website this month about his return to Arizona from playing what he thought then was his final season with the Dolphins in 2024.
“I reminisce sometimes how I used to feel. I wish I still felt that way. …
“I tell these young guys, ‘I wish you could’ve seen me,’” Campbell told Urban. “But my mind is exceptional. And I still have enough athleticism to make the plays I need to make.” Leonard Williams has passed his goal
No NFL player realistically expects to play as long as Williams has, and certainly not as long as Campbell has.
The average career in the league is 3.3 years. It’s longer for kickers, of course, five to seven years. Quarterbacks’ careers average 4.4 seasons. Careers are shortest for running backs. Those players at the sport’s most injured position average 2.6 years, or fewer, in the NFL.
Williams was a coveted NFL draft prospect in 2015. He was an All-American defensive end at USC in 2013, and the Trojans’ most valuable player while a national finalist for the Ted Hendricks and Lombardi awards as college football’s best defensive end and lineman, respectively. The New York Jets made him the sixth pick in the 2015 draft.
As highly decorated and elite as he was, what was Williams’ goal for how long he’d play in the NFL when he entered the league?
“My goal when I first got drafted was to play 10 years,” he said. “I think at the time that was a goal for a lot of young guys.
“You know, we come into the league knowing that it’s short-term for a lot of people. … Once I made it to 10 and I’m still feeling really good, you know, I keep setting new goals now.”
What’s his current one?
“Uhhh … not sure right now,” Williams said. “Just trying to take it year by year.”
That’s working really well for the Seahawks.
In 29 games since Seattle traded to get him from the New York Giants in the middle of the 2023 season, Williams has 16 sacks, 44 quarterback hits and 123 tackles, with 26 of those tackles for a loss.
He’s particularly flourished in coach Mike Macdonald’s multiple defensive schemes. The tricky system moves Williams up and down the defensive line, from end to tackle to sometimes nose tackle.
Most times, he rushes. Sometimes, he fakes a pass rush and drops into coverage. Williams did that last Dec. 1 at the New Jersey Meadowlands against his former Jets. He tricked future Hall-of-Fame quarterback Aaron Rodgers into throwing an interception directly to him over the middle in the red zone. Williams returned his first career interception 92 yards for a touchdown that broke open Seattle’s road win. Williams, 6 feet 5 and 310 pounds, got timed running 17.8 miles per hour on that interception return. It was the longest interception touchdown by a defensive lineman in NFL history.
He also blocked a kick and had two sacks of Rodgers late to seal that victory.
“He’s playing out of his mind right now,” Macdonald said after that win.
One of the best games of his career in front of New York’s media late in the season is a large reason Williams earned the second Pro Bowl selection of his career in 2024. That was the first season of the three-year, $64.5 million contract extension he came directly off a vacation in Japan to sign in March 2024.
Macdonald has made Williams a centerpiece of the team. The veteran defensive lineman is on the coach’s leadership council of players for the second consecutive season. This summer during training camp, Williams often pulled rookie left guard Grey Zabel aside during drills and scrimmages to give the instant starter as a first-round pick advice on how to read and block defensive linemen.
“It shows you who Leo is,” Macdonald said.
What Williams is this week is sore. Yet he’s back on the grind.
He practiced Tuesday, a usual players’ day off across the NFL. He and his teammates will do it again Wednesday. Then they will board a plane to Phoenix to play the made-for-TV-revenue Thursday night game at the Cardinals.
He’s sleeping. A lot.
But, hey, he’s getting out of bed.
“We want to be the team that prepares better, takes care of our body better, gets better sleep,” Williams said. “And all those small things that are going to add up to us feeling better on Thursday.”
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