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After Fox Sports’ Jay Glazer announced on Super Bowl Sunday that the Jets had decided to move on from QB Aaron Rodgers, Jets defensive tackle Quinnen Williams tweeted, “Another rebuild year for me, I guess.”
But according to the story at AL.com (Alabama),”Williams has had a change of outlook after working in the Jets’ offseason program with new coach Aaron Glenn.”
“I definitely think it was an immature thing for me to do at the moment out of emotions, out of frustration,” Williams said on Wednesday. “It was definitely immature. And I hadn’t talked to Aaron (Glenn) previously.”
How immature was it?
Of course on some level, it’s perhaps best for a player to avoid going to social media to voice discontent with your employer.
But Williams clearly showed the world his frustration with the decision to release Rodgers, a four-time NFL MVP.
In his six seasons with the Jets, Williams has never been on a winning team, and during his stint in green, the team has gone through many different quarterbacks. He probably saw the best QB play by far of his six years with the team, with a QB throwing 28 touchdowns, and wondered why they were cutting him.
Some Jets fans probably felt the same way.
Was Williams’ mea culpa about what he tweeted more about getting called on the carpet by the coach for tweeting it, or a change of heart?
“I have talked to [Williams], and listen, I understand the reaction of the players, but I would say this, every decision that me and Moug and make is to win, and to win now,” Glenn said about the Combine in February.
Quinnen is a smart guy, a voracious reader.
Clearly, when he tweeted what he did, it was how it felt; it was out of frustration.
But now, as the team moves forward with Justin Fields at QB, as a leader of the team, Williams has to embrace the new reality and put a smiley face on it.
“So definitely back to that tweet, definitely it was an immature thing to do at the moment, and I’ve grown for that,” Williams said. “Me and Aaron talked a lot about it. Me and (general manager Darren Mougey) talked about it a lot. Me and the coaching staff, we’re all on the same page and stuff like that, so I’ll take full accountability on that and definitely going in the right direction.”
Williams added: “Just looking at it and trying to grow as a leader, trying to grow as a player, trying to grow as an adult, talking to him, talking to the staff and everybody else just gave me a super, super excitement and super, super confidence that we’re going in the right direction to win football games.”
So in closing, Williams did the right thing, taking the high road when asked about his tweet on Wednesday, the first time he was available to the media since that newsworthy social media post.
But being around for his first six NFL seasons, I think he believed what he tweeted at the time, and wondered why the team was moving on from a guy he clearly viewed as an answer at QB.
However, NFL teams want players to keep that stuff “in-house.”
“We make sure we keep it in house, and that’s what we’re going to continue to do,” Glenn said at the Combine.
Things could turn out great with Fields as the Jets’ QB. We shall see.
“A guy who can run extremely fast like that, a guy who can make bombs down the field, and the different great things that he brings to the aspect of the game when it comes down to a dual-threat quarterback,” Williams said of Fields. “I feel like he’s one of the top five dual-threat quarterbacks or one of the top 10 dual-threat quarterbacks in the league right now.”
May 23, 2025
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