Finding their stride
Texas A&M’s Williams realizes potential as leading rusher in SEC
COLLEGE STATION — Texas A&M junior running back Trayveon Williams had no idea the lone braid he wore in front of his face early in the season was such a hit with Aggies.
“I cut it off at one point,” Williams said of the twist of hair that hung past his mouth. “I kind of felt lonely without it.”
So Williams began growing it all over again and now has a short braid hanging in front of his forehead.
“I’m trying to bring it back into the game,” he said with a chuckle. “People are excited I’m bringing it back. I didn’t realize they actually liked it as much as they did.”
The braid is second on fans’ favorite items of what Williams
has brought back this fall. The Aggies’ running game tops the list. Williams, the Southeastern Conference’s leading rusher, is back with a roar following a sophomore season that was subpar mainly because of a nagging ankle injury.
“He’s a huge part of this offense — how he can run the ball but also in the passing game,” A&M quarterback Kellen Mond said. “We’ll try to use him in a lot of different ways this week.”
The Aggies (7-4, 4-3 SEC) host LSU (9-2, 5-2) on Saturday night in the teams’ regular-season finale. A&M will be trying to beat the Tigers for the first time in seven tries as SEC West brethren — this time with Williams having rushed for a league-best 1,326 yards in the first 11 games. A year ago, he rushed for 743 yards over 10 games in just trying to finish out a disappointing season.
“He is very, very elusive,” LSU coach Ed Orgeron said. “When he gets away from the big men, he’s a good open-field runner, and it’s hard for the first guy to tackle him on contact. If you give him a crack or you miss your gap, he may be going 60 yards. He’s a very dangerous runner.”
Jimbo Fisher inherited Williams, a former C.E. King High standout, a year ago when he took over the fired Kevin Sumlin’s program. Fisher wasn’t ready to just hand the starting job to Williams, who’d rushed for 1,057 yards in 2016, most by a true freshman in school history.
“We anoint guys with ability. I anoint guys on performance,” Fisher said. “There’s a difference. Performance is over a period of time, not just a game or a couple of games.”
Fisher began sizing up Williams (5-9, 200) and held off on declaring him the centerpiece of the Aggies’ offense. Then he took note of Williams’ work ethic through the spring and on into the summer and fall.
“Each week how a guy practices and the things that he does, you see it accumulate to what you think he can be,” Fisher said. “But I’ve also seen a guy do that but (suddenly) the wear and tear of a season physically breaks him down, mentally breaks him down, psychologically breaks him down and all of those different things.
“It hasn’t him. Over time that’s where you start to see guys that you think are really special players, because they can do it consistently for a longer period of time, and he’s definitely done that.”
Williams is one of only two A&M players (along with Darren Lewis from 1987-90) to rush for at least 200 yards in a game on four different occasions in his career. Williams, in growing stronger as the season has worn on, has rushed for 502 yards in his last three games, with nearly half that (228) collected in the Aggies’ 38-24 victory over Mississippi on Nov. 10.
When he was a young runner at C.E. King, some outside influences tried persuading Williams to transfer to a more prominent program like North Shore. The future four-star prospect wouldn’t budge, helping revive the C.E. King program.
“Loyalty was always something my parents harped on,” Williams said. “Basically just being true to who you are — don’t let anybody drift you where your heart doesn’t want to go. All my friends and everybody I grew up with were in the local C.E. King area, and I would never leave them.
“I love that program, and I wanted to make change happen for the program.”
The Panthers’ coach at the time, Don Price, once told the Chronicle, “We were 3-7 my first two years as head coach, and then his junior and senior seasons we had playoff teams. That says so much about Tray’s character — not jumping around to see where the grass was greener.”
“If you give him a crack or you miss your gap, he may be going 60 yards.”
LSU coach Ed Orgeron, on Texas A&M’s Trayveon Williams