If you were counting the number of Cincinnati Bengals who rank in the top five of league leaders in a category, some of the names would immediately come to mind.
Ja’Marr Chase? Yes. His 8.0 receptions per game are .1 behind Detroit’s Amon-Ra St. Brown.
Trey Hendrickson? Yes. He ranks fifth in pressure percentage (12.3), per Pro Football Focus. And he’s just outside the top five in sacks (sitting eighth with eight), just two behind league-leading Danielle Hunter of the Minnesota Vikings.
Logan Wilson? Yes. His three interceptions lead all linebackers and are tied for fourth among all players. And cornerback Cam Taylor-Britt is one of eight players tied with Wilson four fourth on the NFL interception list.
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The fifth player, however, is a bit of a surprise. He’s one of the longest-tenured Bengals, yet one of the least used.
Fifth-year running back Trayveon Williams has been building on his solid showing as a kick returner in 2022 with an even better start this season, averaging 23.7 yards per return. Technically, he’s not among the league leaders because the minimum number of returns required is 1.25 per team game played. For Williams, that would be 10, and he only has seven.
Only three players currently have enough returns to qualify. Only 10 have Williams’ baseline of seven or more.
Using seven as the number, Williams ranks fourth in the league and second in the AFC with a 23.7-yard average, which is up from his 22.3 average of a year ago that ranked 17th. Green Bay’s Keisan Nixon leads the way at 25.9, followed Seattle’s DeeJay Dallas (25.7) and Miami’s Braxton Berrios (24.6).
“It’s another opportunity to get the ball in my hands and make plays, and I’m excited to have that role,” Williams said.
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“The guys up front, they block their asses off, and they’ve done a great job of taking on the scheme each week and handling the twists and the movements, and it just makes it easy for me. I just catch the ball and run to the open gap.”
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Special teams coordinator Darrin Simmons said he would like to see Williams get beyond that gap.
“He’s done a good job of running the plays that we run,” Simmons said. “He’s taken advantage of some pretty good sized holes. I’d like for him to continue and break through and not hit a double. I want him to hit a home run.”
Williams feels the same way. His season-long return was a 41-yarder at San Francisco, and he said he keeps thinking about what he could have done differently to make that one longer.
And there’s the one against the Seahawks, early in the first quarter. Bengals rookie Andrei Iosivas was engaged with Seattle’s Julian Love as Williams ran up on them. He elected to go outside, which is the way Iosivas pushed Love, who was able to make the tackle.
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“I’d definitely like to have the Seattle one back,” Williams said. “If I could have anticipated how that block was gonna pan out, I would’ve cut inside and been one-on-one with the kicker. ”
Whether Williams can work himself into the conversation as the league’s leading kick returner depends on him stretching out one or two of those doubles Simmons talked about. It also depends on whether other teams want to give him an opportunity.
Williams had just two returns through the first six games, yet he has five in the two games since.
“We went through a stretch where we were just struggling to get a return. Nobody was kicking it to us,” Williams said. “As it gets colder, as the wind picks up, more returns are gonna come out. And sometimes, it just depends on the team you play. Some are more aggressive and they’re gonna force returns. Buffalo was one of those teams.”
The single-season franchise record is 31.6, set by Adam Jones in 2014.
Williams only returned one kick at Texas A&M before winning the starting tailback job and being pulled from special teams. But he said he did it all through high school, so he wasn’t starting from scratch at the NFL level.
“I’m taking on this opportunity, and I love it to death,” he said. “Darrin Simmons and Zac (Taylor) trust me, and I take pride in it, and I enjoy it.”
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