Jordan Williams’ college football career is sort of like the span of time when people were alive for both the Wright brothers and the moon landing, except with a lot more pass blocking.
In five years, the Georgia Tech right tackle has lived through whole chapters of college athletics history. If teammates want to know what it was like before players transferred willy-nilly, they can ask him. If they don’t believe that it was typical for Yellow Jackets players to scrounge for spending money with no name, image and likeness deals to support them, he has direct knowledge.
“It wasn’t that bad,” he conceded in an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “But it’s definitely a completely different world now.”
And if they disbelieve that it wasn’t so long ago that Tech was the laughingstock of the ACC, he can attest to that, too. If a time capsule were to weigh 315 pounds, smile easily and be skilled at walling off defensive ends on run plays, it might look a lot like Williams.
For instance, Williams was there when NIL collectives and athletes getting paid to play college football first became a possibility.
“It was crazy,” Williams said.
He remembered coach Brent Key jokingly telling him that he expected him to go out and buy a car with his newfound wealth.
“I was like, ‘Nah,’” Williams said. “Really, if I just go get, like a 15-piece (chicken-wing meal), now I’m definitely getting a 20-piece. It’s going to be a 20-piece now. That’s really the thing I’ve been doing.”
This is our kind of historian.
So with Williams’ final home game nigh — the Jackets play N.C. State Thursday night at Bobby Dodd Stadium — his own summation of his time at Tech is worthy of documentation.
In 2022, Williams was one of dozens of offensive linemen nationwide to sign an NIL deal with Hooters to shill for the Atlanta-based wing chain. When Williams and his linemates went to a photo shoot, they were allowed to sample items off the menu.
Said Williams then, “I was like, ‘This might be the best day of my life.’”
Time and perspective have granted Williams a more nuanced insight on how NIL, the transfer portal and all athletes having immediate eligibility after transferring (as opposed to having to sit out a season as many had to in the olden days) have changed his sport.
The freedom of the new transfer rules and the ability to share more fully in the revenues that they’re helping create have been great for athletes.
But not entirely. It has created an environment, Williams said, where “you’ve always got somebody saying how much, like, another school is throwing. When that comes into play, that kind of influences people’s decisions and everything. I was like, ‘I don’t really care. I’m staying at Tech.’”
In his first-ever college game out of Gainesville High — at Florida State on Sept. 12, 2020, a 16-13 upset for the Jackets — only three of Tech’s starting 22 were transfers.
Compare that with his most recent game, the upset of then-No. 4 Miami on Nov. 9. At Bobby Dodd that afternoon, Tech had nine transfers in the starting lineup.
Williams echoed the lament about “how most college programs are just college teams now instead of like a program that you stay in and develop. I feel like that’s the only negative part about NIL — everybody will just get up and leave.”
The portal, of course, gives as it takes. The stunning win over the Hurricanes probably wouldn’t have happened without the assistance of transfers such as quarterback Haynes King and defensive lineman Romello Height.
Credit: Hyosub Shin/AJC
Credit: Hyosub Shin/AJC
Williams remains close with many of his fellow 2020 signees, including running back Jahmyr Gibbs (who left for Alabama and now stars for the Detroit Lions) and defensive end Kyle Kennard (now leading the SEC in sacks at South Carolina). He said he wonders “all the time” what it would have been like if they’d stuck together.
But that’s not how it works anymore. He has seen changes in coaches, teammates, support staff and facilities.
“It’s a whole different group of people on the team this year,” he said. “It’s a whole different vibe of people.”
In that swirl of his sport and within his team, Williams has been a pillar. He stuck it out through the constant defeat of Geoff Collins’ tenure.
“We might not have gotten the results that we wanted or anything, but it was always a fun time in the building,” Williams said. “He was a real family man. I always tell people I really did love coach Collins, and I’ve got nothing bad to say about him.”
And then he stayed and developed at Tech with Key and offensive-line coach Geep Wade. As a full-time starting offensive lineman from the time he was a freshman, he could have left for more lucrative options.
“You always have friends or old teammates at other schools and the coaches are asking about you,” Williams said. “I always tell them I’m not about to end up, like, four hours away from my house or anything when I’m 40 minutes down the road from home.”
The reward has been to witness and catalyze to Tech’s Key-led turnaround. It was his former position coach’s elevation to interim coach in 2022 when the team started to click, Williams said.
“And then going into the (2023) season, we pretty much had to lay a whole new foundation down,” Williams said. “The first thing we really harped on was discipline. If anybody was out there for those (conditioning workouts) that offseason leading up to last year, it definitely instilled some discipline.”
Last season, that discipline propelled the Jackets to their first bowl season since 2018. Williams’ position group has been at the core of the ascent. Tech led the ACC in rushing offense last season and is third this year. The Jackets gashed Miami for 271 rushing yards, nearly three times what the Hurricanes had been allowing per game to that point. It was a textbook case of what Williams and his linemates call “sandpapering” — the line imposing its will over an opponent with a dominant run game.
“I remember that first drive, when we came off the field, the whole O-line, we all just looked at each other,” Williams said. “I forgot who said it — it was either ‘Big Red’ (Keylan Rutledge) or Weston Franklin – and they were like, ‘Oh, yeah, we’re about to sandpaper these boys.’”
On top of his business degree, Williams will leave with a most appropriate accomplishment. His 50 career starts (a total aided by his having five seasons of eligibility because of COVID-19) are the most for a Tech offensive lineman and tied for second most in school history. He will eclipse record holder Roddy Jones (52 starts) if he starts against North Carolina State, Georgia and in the bowl game.
It was cause for reflection for Key, who recruited Williams and has been with him throughout. He laughed when recalling how Williams and teammates were sent home in March 2020 at the start of the pandemic. Without the supervision of coaches, Williams returned to campus with a bit more curvature.
“Jordan walks in and I’m like, ‘Who is this?’” Key said, levity in his voice. “I said, ‘Get on that (scale).’ And I think the scale went up to 360, and stopped or broke. ... He looked like the Goodyear blimp.”
Over time, he has earned Key’s admiration by staying through the upheaval when it would have been easy and profitable to head out the door.
“To have a guy stick through what he stuck through at Georgia Tech and be able to say now that it’s 50 games that he’s started, that’s pretty remarkable to me,” Key said.
Remarkable and true.
“Good kid,” Key said. “Grown into a really good man.”
In any era of college athletics and particularly this one, it’s a story worth telling.
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