After re-signing James Bradberry and restructuring Darius Slay, the Eagles added another cornerback Thursday night, and like Slay and Bradberry, this one is also a former second-round pick.
According Mary Kay Cabot of the Cleveland Plain dealership, the Eagles signed 25-year-old outside cornerback Greedy Williams. No contract term or duration is yet available.
Williams played football at Calvary Baptist High School in Shreveport, Louisiana, the high school that Doug Pederson coached several years earlier before embarking on an NFL coaching career.
He led the SEC with six interceptions as a rookie at LSU in 2017, becoming only the second LSU rookie in the past 35 years to earn All-SEC first-team honors. The first was punter Brad Wing in 2011, two years before he was in training camp with the Eagles. He added two INTs in 2018.
The Browns made Williams the 46th pick in the 2019 draft, seven picks before the Eagles took Mile Sanders. He was the seventh cornerback taken overall.
Williams – whose first name is Andraez – started 21 games in four years with the Browns. He started 12 games as a rookie but missed the entire 2020 season after suffering a nerve injury to his shoulder during training camp. He had his first two interceptions in 2021 – against Kirk Cousins and Derek Carr.
But after playing 680 and 590 defensive snaps in 2019 and 2021 and starting 20 games, he only played 105 snaps last season and started just one game. According to Stathead, opposing quarterbacks targeting him this year were 9 for 10 for 163 yards and two touchdowns — a perfect 158.3 passer rating.
Of his 1,375 career defensive snaps, only 45 were in the slot, including just 10 from his rookie year.
Although the Eagles have brought Bradberry and Slay back, they don’t have many young corners on the roster. Zech McPhearson, a 24-year-old fourth-round pick in 2021, played 278 defensive snaps in two years, and Josh Jobe, who spent the year on the 53-man roster as an undrafted rookie, played 12 snaps defensive (and 220 on special teams). Josiah Scott is 23 years old, but it’s a corner of slot machines.
In Williams, the Eagles get a cornerback who was highly valued coming out of LSU, who has starting experience, who’s only 25 and probably has a very low price, since that’s all what Howie Roseman can afford at this point.
Williams was the cornerback covering AJ Brown during joint Eagles-Browns practice last summer in Berea, Ohio, when Brown made a dramatic catch in the end zone on a Jalen Hurts lob.
Later, after another hold against Williams, as Williams lay on the ground, Brown stood over Williams and glared at him.
Now they’re teammates and they’ll both face the Browns in another round of joint practice in August.
The Eagles have brought back a number of their own defensive free agents – Brandon Graham, Fletcher Cox, Bradberry and Slay – but Williams is the first defensive player from another team they’ve signed since free agency began on Monday. . The only other outside player they have signed is running back Rashaad Penny.
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