Garrett Williams will always be a player that Jayden Daniels will remember.
In the second quarter of the Sunday's game against the Commanders, the Cardinals cornerback leaped in front of a streaking Terry McLaurin to intercept Daniels, the Commanders rookie quarterback, for the first time in his young NFL career.
"I haven't even checked my phone yet," Williams said, after the Cardinals fell to the Commanders, 42-14.
It was an impressive athletic play, with the Cardinals cornerback jumping in the air, juggling the football, and still managing to come down with it. It was the first time in 16 straight offensive possessions -- excluding kneeldowns -- that the Commanders offense didn't points on the scoreboard. With the Cardinals only down seven, momentum could've shifted.
Instead, it did not amount to anything more than putting a dent in Daniels' impressive stat line -- 26-of-30 for 233 yards with a touchdown and 47 yards on the ground.
"I feel like that's always been one of my strengths in college, and even going back to high school, is making timely plays," Williams said. "That's something I try to pride myself on is when the team needs a play, make the play. I feel like that time period, our energy was kind of down. So when I made that play, it's not really about more the interception and more about flipping the script and getting everybody back engaged and back on the same page."
Williams spent the first portion of his 2023 rookie season rehabbing from a torn ACL, made an interception in his debut against the Seahawks, and has flown under the radar since.
The interception in Sunday's game proved Williams still has the ability to make a splash play. But the Cardinals defense as a whole struggled to stop the run. The Commanders chewed up 216 yards on the ground. Couple that with a 28-point loss at home, a defensive-minded head coach like Jonathan Gannon wasn't thrilled.
"We haven't done a good enough job at stopping the run, so we're playing behind the eight ball on defense all day and it's a hard way to go," Gannon said. "We've got to tweak some things in the run game to make sure we're doing a better job.
"We have to do the little easy things better. Set edges, tackle, get off blocks, be in the right spot. I know we'll be able to fix those things."
Gannon was asked if there were any positive takeaways. He lamented that there weren't many.
He did mention the positive will be how they regroup from Sunday, something that Williams is eager to learn from when the team returns to Tempe on Monday.
"The biggest thing is just to come in tomorrow and be honest with yourself about not really what you're doing well, because if you're getting beat by 28, you know you really need to focus on what you're not doing good at," Williams said. "Then go from there and make your point on how that's not going to happen again.
"If every individual does that, and then we come together as a team and we talk about the things we need to fix collectively together. I feel like when you go into San Fran next week, it's a clean slate."
