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Bonus that an LSU beat writer is writing this for SI.
By ROSS DELLENGER
November 29, 2018
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. â While 12-year-old Quinnen Williams watched fireworks explode above him, the secret his mother kept was exposed in an emergency room of a nearby hospital. The cancer sheâd beaten five years ago had returned, and Marquischa Henderson Williams hid it from everyoneâuntil Fourth of July night in 2010, when the disease incapacitated her in such a way that her mother rushed her to the ER. âShe went in that night,â Yvarta Henderson says, âand she never came back home.â Quinnenâs mother passed away five weeks later, succumbing to a disease she spent months fighting in obscurity, an ironic twist to a message she always told her children: Keep a smile on your face because you never know what someoneâs going through.
More than eight years later, Quinnen has not overcome her death. He politely declines to discuss it, a deep hurt throbbing inside the 6'4", 300-pound frame of Alabamaâs starting nose guard. He wonât tell you he plays football to make her proud. He wonât tell you he scribbles her name on his wrist tape before each game. He wonât tell you heâs still deep in grief. But heâll show you on Saturdays. Heâll use those violent hands to push aside double teams, spin off blocks to gobble up rushers, and move those quick feet to chase down quarterbacks.
Quinnen wonât tell you he uses football as an outlet for his tragedy, but he does. There is a quiet catalyst to his vicious sacks, all seven of them, and the team-high 16 tackles for loss, too. There is an impetus behind his meteoric rise from little-known reserve to top-10 draft prospect in the span of a few weeks. There is a deeper reason heâll suit up Saturday in the top-ranked Crimson Tideâs SEC championship game against No. 4 Georgia. It is her, Marquischa Henderson Williams, a woman who he resembles, from his chubby cheeks to his big heart, from his dark brown eyes to his aspirations (he wants to, one day, be a school teacher like she was).
âWe donât talk about my mom passing so much,â says Quinnenâs brother Quincy. âWe talk about the positive. We talk like sheâs still alive.â Quincy is the oldest of four children Marquischa left behind, a âspokesman of the family,â he refers to himself, a mature kid who just completed a five-year career as a linebacker at Murray State. For Quinnen, heâs the rock. âQuinnen took it the hardest,â Quincy continues. âHe was a mommaâs boy, the one with the big heart. The only person he talks to, really, about it is me. When we do talk, I let him know every single time how proud she is looking down at us.â
Quinnen is no longer behind the scenes, as Alabama linebacker Christian Miller puts it. A bench-rider for the last two years, this redshirt sophomore is now a consistent presence behind the line of scrimmage, even calling his sacks on the sideline like Babe Ruth called homers in the box. âHe tells us before he comes onto the field,â says quarterback Tua Tagovailoa. ââIâm going to get two sacks this series.â And he does it.â NFL scouts and opposing coaches have noticed. The guy is nearly averaging as many tackles a game (five) as he averaged snaps (seven) a year ago. âThat kid couldnât even get on the field last year,â one SEC assistant says. âYou look up and nobody in the f------ country can block him.â ESPN analyst Todd McShay recently ranked him as the No. 6 prospect in the 2019 NFL draft, and Mel Kiper, earlier this month, suggested he could challenge Ohio Stateâs Nick Bosa and Houstonâs Ed Oliver for the No. 1 overall pick.
STAPLES: How Kyler Murray Pushed Tua Tagovailoa Into One of the Best Two-Man Heisman Races Ever
What makes his rise so confounding: He only this year moved inside to nose guard from a career of playing defensive tackle or defensive end. He began training for the move last January, gaining about 20 pounds and poring over film of nose guards like Rams middle man Aaron Donald and ex-Alabama noses DaâRon Payne, AâShawn Robinson, Jarran Reed and Marcell Dareus. He remembers stuffing his belly with so much foodâhe ate steak at least once a dayâthat he felt sick. It all seems worth it now for the defensive leader of the 12â0 Tide and a finalist for the Outland Trophy, which is awarded to the nationâs best lineman.
This is a season in which even he himself didnât see coming. âI ainât know Iâd even get on the field!â he says. Quinnen reflects on the hurdles heâs crossed over the last 10 months to reach this point. He puts aside a bag of potato chips, leans back against a chair and smiles. âA lot of football players come into college and donât play their freshman year and it just destroys them and they donât get back to that person they came in at,â he says. âThereâs a lot of stuff I look at, like, how did I make it to this moment?â
Part of Quinnen Williams's support team is pictured here in a photo taken Wednesday outside of his grandmother's home in Birmingham. From left to right: aunt LaQuita Comack, brother Giovanni Williams, uncle Charles Henderson II, aunt Ivy Allen, grandpa Charles Henderson, grandmother Yvarta Henderson and aunt Marilyn Jackson.
Ross Dellenger
That story begins well before his arrival to Tuscaloosa. It began right here, in his grandmotherâs quaint home in southwest Birmingham. Yvarta Henderson and her 11 siblings were raised in this same neighborhood, East Brownville, a hodgepodge of modest homes like Yvartaâs, mixed with abandon lots and cratered houses. The background noise here is a persistent low hum, the result of three separate railroad tracks crisscrossing the area. Inside Yvartaâs home are reminders of the struggles this family has faced. A portrait of Marquischa is positioned prominently in the small living room, and her face is on an afghan draped over a recliner. Yvarta gestures to a chair at a circular dining room table. âShe used to sit right there and do her work,â Yvarta says, âher and her laptop.â Marquischa, a school teacher, was in masterâs degree courses at the online-based University of Phoenix.
Marquischa battled her illness in secret while still teaching her first-grade classes, juggling those masterâs courses and learning new cooking creations while watching her favorite channel, the Food Network, often times with little Quinnen. âShe didnât say anything about the cancer,â Yvarta says. The family believes Marquischa, then 37, didnât want to burden the household even moreâher father, Charles, was already sick. Charles Henderson is wheelchair-bound now after doctors had to amputate his right leg following a brain aneurysm and multiple seizures. On a sunny but cold Wednesday morning, Charles sits quietly in his wheelchair staring out of the familyâs open front door. Heâs within earshot of the conversation about his deceased daughter. âA good woman,â a choked up Charles interrupts.
Quincy says he and his siblings âblamed Godâ for their motherâs death at first. Quinnen closed out everybody, and heâs still somewhat shy to this day. Their grandfather got the children out of the funk, turned them to prayer and delivered to them a message: Prove youâve been listening to your mom this whole life. âHer biggest thing was school and sports,â Quincy says. âSports was our way of escaping the reality of my mom passing.â Quincy turned into an elite swimmer before switching only to football, joining younger brothers Quinnen and Giovanni. The trio rose up the ranks at Wenonah High, finding themselves on the field at the same time during Quincyâs senior year: Quincy playing linebacker, Giovanni at defensive end and Quinnen at defensive tackle. Fans referred to it as the âWilliams Zone,â says Henry Pope, the Wenonah defensive coordinator. âYou were not running on that defense.â
The three brothers are close, as is the baby of the family, Ciele, a senior cheerleader at Wenonah. They bonded after their motherâs death in a way thatâs tough to understand. Quincy tries: âWe think about ourselves as a body, four of us, four parts: Iâm the one with the plan, Quinnen is the one with the emotions and our other brother and sisters are our eyes.â The four share a text group that is notorious in the family. No one else is allowed, especially not Grandma, laughs Giovanni, who now attends a Birmingham-area junior college.
Giovanni hopes to continue his football career like his brothers, but he doesnât share their love for shoes: Quincy and Quinnen own more than 200 pairs of tennis shoes. âWeâre sneakerheads,â laughs Quincy. Quinnen has so many shoes he often doles them out to Alabama teammates, with the faint hope that they might be returned one day. Quinnen is the soft-spoken, shy one of the group, with a not-so-subtle nickname: Big Baby. Heâs a peculiar kid. He still refers to his grandmother as âMrs. Hendersonâ from his days at the same school in which she taught. On the field, he helps opponents off the ground after he puts them there, and he holds this unusual guilty feeling of having to get a sack each time the offense scores a touchdown. âI just feel like I owe Tua something,â Quinnen explains. He uses that for motivation. He does the same with those two seasons as a reserve. Quinnen wonât tell you, but Quincy will: He heard people were doubting him. âHe told me when he got his shot, heâs going to stay in the spotlight,â Quincy says.
And here he is now, a projected top-10 selection in the 2019 NFL draft if he leaves after his redshirt sophomore season. The No. 11 selection in this past yearâs draft signed a contract worth $16.4 million with a $10 million signing bonus. âIf he wants to stay another year, thatâs his prerogative,â says Ivy Allen, one of Quinnenâs three aunts gathered at Yvartaâs home Wednesday. Quinnenâs family members say they havenât looked at the draft projections. Quinnen himself admits he has. âI see the top-fives and stuff,â he says. âI have goals for this team.â
His team might be one of the best in college football history. The Crimson Tide have opened the season with 12 consecutive victories by 20 points or moreâthe only other time thatâs been done in NCAA history was by Yale in 1888. Most recently Alabama dispatched rival Auburn by 31 points, a rather emotional game for Quinnen. Not only was he at one point committed to Auburn, but his mother was a big Auburn fan. Quinnen wonât tell you that, just like he wonât tell you about his momâs feta cheese pasta or those freshly baked chocolate chip cookies. He wonât tell you about how she used to play third base during family softball games or how sheâd sit in her car, illness and all, while her sons threw the football at the park. âHe hasnât grieved like he wants to, at least not in front of everybody,â Allen says. âIt has to happen. It will.â In a way, it happens each Saturday in the fall, when big No. 92 unleashes onto his opponents whateverâs bottled up inside.
By ROSS DELLENGER
November 29, 2018
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. â While 12-year-old Quinnen Williams watched fireworks explode above him, the secret his mother kept was exposed in an emergency room of a nearby hospital. The cancer sheâd beaten five years ago had returned, and Marquischa Henderson Williams hid it from everyoneâuntil Fourth of July night in 2010, when the disease incapacitated her in such a way that her mother rushed her to the ER. âShe went in that night,â Yvarta Henderson says, âand she never came back home.â Quinnenâs mother passed away five weeks later, succumbing to a disease she spent months fighting in obscurity, an ironic twist to a message she always told her children: Keep a smile on your face because you never know what someoneâs going through.
More than eight years later, Quinnen has not overcome her death. He politely declines to discuss it, a deep hurt throbbing inside the 6'4", 300-pound frame of Alabamaâs starting nose guard. He wonât tell you he plays football to make her proud. He wonât tell you he scribbles her name on his wrist tape before each game. He wonât tell you heâs still deep in grief. But heâll show you on Saturdays. Heâll use those violent hands to push aside double teams, spin off blocks to gobble up rushers, and move those quick feet to chase down quarterbacks.
Quinnen wonât tell you he uses football as an outlet for his tragedy, but he does. There is a quiet catalyst to his vicious sacks, all seven of them, and the team-high 16 tackles for loss, too. There is an impetus behind his meteoric rise from little-known reserve to top-10 draft prospect in the span of a few weeks. There is a deeper reason heâll suit up Saturday in the top-ranked Crimson Tideâs SEC championship game against No. 4 Georgia. It is her, Marquischa Henderson Williams, a woman who he resembles, from his chubby cheeks to his big heart, from his dark brown eyes to his aspirations (he wants to, one day, be a school teacher like she was).
âWe donât talk about my mom passing so much,â says Quinnenâs brother Quincy. âWe talk about the positive. We talk like sheâs still alive.â Quincy is the oldest of four children Marquischa left behind, a âspokesman of the family,â he refers to himself, a mature kid who just completed a five-year career as a linebacker at Murray State. For Quinnen, heâs the rock. âQuinnen took it the hardest,â Quincy continues. âHe was a mommaâs boy, the one with the big heart. The only person he talks to, really, about it is me. When we do talk, I let him know every single time how proud she is looking down at us.â
Quinnen is no longer behind the scenes, as Alabama linebacker Christian Miller puts it. A bench-rider for the last two years, this redshirt sophomore is now a consistent presence behind the line of scrimmage, even calling his sacks on the sideline like Babe Ruth called homers in the box. âHe tells us before he comes onto the field,â says quarterback Tua Tagovailoa. ââIâm going to get two sacks this series.â And he does it.â NFL scouts and opposing coaches have noticed. The guy is nearly averaging as many tackles a game (five) as he averaged snaps (seven) a year ago. âThat kid couldnât even get on the field last year,â one SEC assistant says. âYou look up and nobody in the f------ country can block him.â ESPN analyst Todd McShay recently ranked him as the No. 6 prospect in the 2019 NFL draft, and Mel Kiper, earlier this month, suggested he could challenge Ohio Stateâs Nick Bosa and Houstonâs Ed Oliver for the No. 1 overall pick.
STAPLES: How Kyler Murray Pushed Tua Tagovailoa Into One of the Best Two-Man Heisman Races Ever
What makes his rise so confounding: He only this year moved inside to nose guard from a career of playing defensive tackle or defensive end. He began training for the move last January, gaining about 20 pounds and poring over film of nose guards like Rams middle man Aaron Donald and ex-Alabama noses DaâRon Payne, AâShawn Robinson, Jarran Reed and Marcell Dareus. He remembers stuffing his belly with so much foodâhe ate steak at least once a dayâthat he felt sick. It all seems worth it now for the defensive leader of the 12â0 Tide and a finalist for the Outland Trophy, which is awarded to the nationâs best lineman.
This is a season in which even he himself didnât see coming. âI ainât know Iâd even get on the field!â he says. Quinnen reflects on the hurdles heâs crossed over the last 10 months to reach this point. He puts aside a bag of potato chips, leans back against a chair and smiles. âA lot of football players come into college and donât play their freshman year and it just destroys them and they donât get back to that person they came in at,â he says. âThereâs a lot of stuff I look at, like, how did I make it to this moment?â
Part of Quinnen Williams's support team is pictured here in a photo taken Wednesday outside of his grandmother's home in Birmingham. From left to right: aunt LaQuita Comack, brother Giovanni Williams, uncle Charles Henderson II, aunt Ivy Allen, grandpa Charles Henderson, grandmother Yvarta Henderson and aunt Marilyn Jackson.
Ross Dellenger
That story begins well before his arrival to Tuscaloosa. It began right here, in his grandmotherâs quaint home in southwest Birmingham. Yvarta Henderson and her 11 siblings were raised in this same neighborhood, East Brownville, a hodgepodge of modest homes like Yvartaâs, mixed with abandon lots and cratered houses. The background noise here is a persistent low hum, the result of three separate railroad tracks crisscrossing the area. Inside Yvartaâs home are reminders of the struggles this family has faced. A portrait of Marquischa is positioned prominently in the small living room, and her face is on an afghan draped over a recliner. Yvarta gestures to a chair at a circular dining room table. âShe used to sit right there and do her work,â Yvarta says, âher and her laptop.â Marquischa, a school teacher, was in masterâs degree courses at the online-based University of Phoenix.
Marquischa battled her illness in secret while still teaching her first-grade classes, juggling those masterâs courses and learning new cooking creations while watching her favorite channel, the Food Network, often times with little Quinnen. âShe didnât say anything about the cancer,â Yvarta says. The family believes Marquischa, then 37, didnât want to burden the household even moreâher father, Charles, was already sick. Charles Henderson is wheelchair-bound now after doctors had to amputate his right leg following a brain aneurysm and multiple seizures. On a sunny but cold Wednesday morning, Charles sits quietly in his wheelchair staring out of the familyâs open front door. Heâs within earshot of the conversation about his deceased daughter. âA good woman,â a choked up Charles interrupts.
Quincy says he and his siblings âblamed Godâ for their motherâs death at first. Quinnen closed out everybody, and heâs still somewhat shy to this day. Their grandfather got the children out of the funk, turned them to prayer and delivered to them a message: Prove youâve been listening to your mom this whole life. âHer biggest thing was school and sports,â Quincy says. âSports was our way of escaping the reality of my mom passing.â Quincy turned into an elite swimmer before switching only to football, joining younger brothers Quinnen and Giovanni. The trio rose up the ranks at Wenonah High, finding themselves on the field at the same time during Quincyâs senior year: Quincy playing linebacker, Giovanni at defensive end and Quinnen at defensive tackle. Fans referred to it as the âWilliams Zone,â says Henry Pope, the Wenonah defensive coordinator. âYou were not running on that defense.â
The three brothers are close, as is the baby of the family, Ciele, a senior cheerleader at Wenonah. They bonded after their motherâs death in a way thatâs tough to understand. Quincy tries: âWe think about ourselves as a body, four of us, four parts: Iâm the one with the plan, Quinnen is the one with the emotions and our other brother and sisters are our eyes.â The four share a text group that is notorious in the family. No one else is allowed, especially not Grandma, laughs Giovanni, who now attends a Birmingham-area junior college.
Giovanni hopes to continue his football career like his brothers, but he doesnât share their love for shoes: Quincy and Quinnen own more than 200 pairs of tennis shoes. âWeâre sneakerheads,â laughs Quincy. Quinnen has so many shoes he often doles them out to Alabama teammates, with the faint hope that they might be returned one day. Quinnen is the soft-spoken, shy one of the group, with a not-so-subtle nickname: Big Baby. Heâs a peculiar kid. He still refers to his grandmother as âMrs. Hendersonâ from his days at the same school in which she taught. On the field, he helps opponents off the ground after he puts them there, and he holds this unusual guilty feeling of having to get a sack each time the offense scores a touchdown. âI just feel like I owe Tua something,â Quinnen explains. He uses that for motivation. He does the same with those two seasons as a reserve. Quinnen wonât tell you, but Quincy will: He heard people were doubting him. âHe told me when he got his shot, heâs going to stay in the spotlight,â Quincy says.
And here he is now, a projected top-10 selection in the 2019 NFL draft if he leaves after his redshirt sophomore season. The No. 11 selection in this past yearâs draft signed a contract worth $16.4 million with a $10 million signing bonus. âIf he wants to stay another year, thatâs his prerogative,â says Ivy Allen, one of Quinnenâs three aunts gathered at Yvartaâs home Wednesday. Quinnenâs family members say they havenât looked at the draft projections. Quinnen himself admits he has. âI see the top-fives and stuff,â he says. âI have goals for this team.â
His team might be one of the best in college football history. The Crimson Tide have opened the season with 12 consecutive victories by 20 points or moreâthe only other time thatâs been done in NCAA history was by Yale in 1888. Most recently Alabama dispatched rival Auburn by 31 points, a rather emotional game for Quinnen. Not only was he at one point committed to Auburn, but his mother was a big Auburn fan. Quinnen wonât tell you that, just like he wonât tell you about his momâs feta cheese pasta or those freshly baked chocolate chip cookies. He wonât tell you about how she used to play third base during family softball games or how sheâd sit in her car, illness and all, while her sons threw the football at the park. âHe hasnât grieved like he wants to, at least not in front of everybody,â Allen says. âIt has to happen. It will.â In a way, it happens each Saturday in the fall, when big No. 92 unleashes onto his opponents whateverâs bottled up inside.
