TUCSON, Ariz. — Nick Williams began his Giants coaching career by accidentally ignoring Joe Judge’s call.
Williams was working remotely as Southern Illinois’ wide receivers coach in the spring of 2020, sitting at home with his wife and their new dog during the COVID-19 shutdown.
Judge was trying to reach him, but Williams’ wife was working on his laptop, which is synced with his phone.
“He kept calling during her teaching, and she kept ending his call,” Williams, 30, told the Daily News with a laugh after Thursday’s practice at the University of Arizona. “And my dad called and was like, ‘Nick, you need to answer the phone. What are you doing?’ I was like, ‘What are you talking about? I never got a call.’ And before you know it, I was like, ‘Oh God, Joe Judge called me.’ And here I am today.”
Bobby Williams, Nick’s dad, was Judge’s boss as Alabama’s special teams coordinator during Judge’s three seasons as a special teams assistant on Nick Saban’s staff from 2009-11.
Nick Williams was a wide receiver and special teamer on those teams, contributing to the Crimson Tide’s national title runs in 2009 and 2011.
He didn’t follow his father into coaching at first. The Alabama graduate’s first job out of college was a Waffle House manager in training in Tuscaloosa, Ala., just to make some money.
But he quickly realized “this is not me” and became a volunteer offensive analyst on Saban’s 2012 staff, kicking off his career. His bond with Judge during their Alabama days would earn him a call nearly a decade later.
“I did the scout [team] stuff with Joe,” Williams recalled. “He would get after it a little bit. I would always go up to their offices after practice and he was always in there. That’s how we got close. His office was right across from my dad, so every day I’d see him.
“He said [now] it’s like ‘same-old, same-old,’” Williams said with a smile.
Same-old except here in Arizona in December 2021, Williams is answering the most important calls he’s gotten from Judge yet:
-The responsibility of teaching recently-signed quarterback Jake Fromm the Giants’ offense;
-Preparing him to run the first-team offense in Wednesday’s practice and possibly play on Sunday against the Los Angeles Chargers, although Mike Glennon is expected to start;
-The job of coaching the quarterbacks on the practice field as a conduit to QB coach Jerry Schuplinski, who has been quarantined in his hotel room all week with COVID-19.
That’s all on top of Williams’ normal, non-stop work as an offensive quality control coach on Judge’s staff.
“A lot of those younger coaches in the building wear a lot of hats and don’t sleep a lot of hours,” Judge said Thursday. “Nick’s a guy who’s been ready, he’s been preparing. He’s been in that [quarterback] room the entire time, and this week more than ever, he’s had a lot more direct control over a lot of the communication.”
About the only thing Williams hasn’t had to do with Fromm lately is pick him up from the airport when he signed last week — though Williams joked that he wished he had.
“I wouldn’t have minded picking him up,” he said. “Get out of the office a little bit, kind of enjoy the outside, see the sun. Like, ‘Wow, this is what the world’s like!”
But the second Fromm completed his physical, Williams said the two of them hunkered down and “met for I don’t even know how long. It was a long time.”
Offensive coordinator Jason Garrett worked directly with Daniel Jones and the quarterbacks. Williams already had been sitting in quarterback meetings daily. And since Garrett’s firing, the entire offensive group has stepped up.
“I kinda had to teach him the alphabet of the offense,” he said of Fromm, 23, a second-year pro who has yet to play in an NFL game.
Williams said because Fromm is “super smart,” they’ve “lightened” their daily cramming a little bit and haven’t had to get “too extreme” with any all-nighters here in Tucson. But they still spend “a couple hours” daily together after practice and meetings reviewing the offense.
“So we got this long day, and then afterwards it’s just me and Jake,” he said. “That’s [also] when the coaches are meeting about the game plan, so I’ve gotta work with Jake and then catch up [in the meeting] like wait, what is this? It takes a little bit of prep.”
“Nick’s great,” Fromm said. “He’s helped me out a ton and I’m learning a lot of football from him. I couldn’t thank him enough.”
Part of what makes Williams’ work so fascinating this week is how much he has to do on top of grooming a player at the most important position on the team.
Williams said his daily routine is to wake up at 5:15 a.m., arrive at the facility by 5:45, and collaborate with fellow quality control coach Russ Callaway and assistant Jody Wright to lay that day’s groundwork behind the scenes.
They prepare Freddie Kitchens’ call sheet for that day’s practice, print it out, and make sure all of the players and coaches have it.
“We don’t have to laminate it, thank God,” he laughed.
Then the entire offensive staff meets. Then Williams, Callaway and Wright make sure the play drawings match the call sheet. Then beginning at 7:30 a.m. they have to present it all to the players, go through walkthroughs, make sure their jerseys are out.
They also have to find time to break down the film of the next week’s opponent.
“Basically when it’s lunch time, you gotta grab it, go upstairs, break down film,” he said.
Most importantly, though, Williams embraced Judge’s most important edict for his young assistant back in 2020.
“Last year he challenged me to master the scheme and know the offense like the back of your hand, and I took that to heart, took it personally,” Williams said. “It got to a point where it was an expectation: If a player didn’t know what was going on, I wanted them to talk to me.
“That’s why I wanted to get into coaching: to help guys out,” he added. “Especially the new guys that come in. So it means a lot that [Judge] has trust in me to teach the offensive system to a new guy.”
Judge planted Williams in the quarterbacks room with Schuplinski, and on different days they’d assign him to a young developing QB or let him call the plays in the huddle off the script during basic practice periods.
Williams had been a receivers coach at Jacksonville State (2014-16) and Southern Illinois (2017-19) after volunteering at Alabama in 2012 and working as a graduate assistant at Valdosta State (Ga.) in 2013.
So this was a dramatic change, and he basically became the coaching equivalent of his new pupil Fromm, soaking up as much as he could as quickly as he could.
“I was a receivers coach in college so I didn’t really pay attention to all that,” he admitted. “I was always worried about just the receivers’ routes. I didn’t care about protections. Ever since I got here, being with the quarterbacks is a new challenge, learning a new position, you have to worry about everything.”
Williams’ father also was on Saban’s Miami Dolphins staff in 2005-06 with Garrett and Giants tight ends coach Derek Dooley. So Williams has welcomed the crash course from friendly faces.
He taught a ton to himself working virtually in 2020 and last offseason, and he said the entire staff has taken him under its wing. He even got called on during one coaches-only Zoom session last year and got his assignment wrong but wasn’t shamed for it. It made him better.
“We have such a smart group as an offensive staff, you just sit back and learn every single day,” he said. “Jerry has been absolutely amazing. He took me under his arm and he didn’t make me feel dumb asking a question. Everybody was a big help. Dooley’s been in this Dallas system forever. Jason was awesome. Freddie was awesome. You can ask them anything on the side.”
One of the coolest parts of Williams’ story is that although his father, Bobby, has a lot of pull — as a former Michigan State head coach, longtime Saban assistant, and current Oregon special teams and tight ends coach — he has made his son earn it.
Nepotism is common in football coaching, a practice that often results in the premature promotion of family members into positions above their experience level.
But Williams has gotten his hands dirty and continues to do the grunt work even as Judge gives him this big shot.
“My dad and mom raised me and my sister really well,” he said. “I have great parents. We always could get whatever we wanted but we were never spoiled. He was never like, ‘I got you no matter what.’ He was, ‘You gotta earn it yourself. Don’t use my name to get a job,’ basically.
“He didn’t really bluntly say it like that,” Williams added, “but it was basically like that. You gotta go make your name yourself. But he was always there for advice.
Williams said he never asked his father to help him with a job.
“Even this job,” he said. “I didn’t even know it was open. I just got a call out of nowhere.”
Fortunately, his dad did step in and told him to pick up the phone.
“When Joe got the job here it was like, damn, he’ll do a hell of a job, and before you know it, I got called,” Williams said with a laugh. “And I was like, ‘OK! Cool, shoot. Say less.”