A fifth-year player, Greg Williams has been around a while, but he’s also been buried on the depth chart. The defensive end has played in 19 games for Clemson from 2019-22, recording 18 tackles (2.0 for loss), a sack and a pass breakup across 168 career snaps.
In this day and age of the transfer portal, Williams could have already left Clemson in search of more consistent playing time elsewhere. Instead, he has stuck it out with the Tigers to this point, and head coach Dabo Swinney hopes Williams will stay with the team in a reserve role again in 2023.
At the Prowl & Growl event in Columbia on Wednesday evening, Swinney spoke about Williams’ future, and how proud Swinney is of the graduate senior who earned his degree in criminal justice this past December.
“I’m proud of him,” Swinney said. “He’s graduated, he’s got his degree. He’s probably one of those guys that probably has to assess what he really wants to do moving forward, does he want to keep playing and so forth, because he’s a graduate and things have changed a little bit. If you had told me this time last year that (defensive ends) Xavier Thomas and (Justin) Mascoll were gonna be back, I don’t think any of us expected that. But that’s just kind of how it’s worked out.
“But man, Greg is a guy I’m really, really proud of because he’s a great teammate, he’s incredibly smart and he’s really, really progressed developmentally in what he needed to do to get better. So, hopefully he’ll stay and be a good player for us this year – probably in a backup role, but valuable member to our team. But I’m really proud of him for all that he’s accomplished, and most of all, being a graduate.”
Last season, Williams was credited with four tackles while playing 31 defensive snaps over four games. He recorded three tackles vs. Furman and contributed a tackle at Boston College.
The 6-foot-3, 270-pounder was a four-year starter at Swansea (S.C.) High School who played in the Shrine Bowl for South Carolina in 2018. Coming out of high school, he was ranked as the eighth-best overall player in the state of South Carolina by ESPN.com.
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