The Chase Is On: Colleges Pursue Another Williams

Gregg Williams's Son Is Loudoun County High Standout

On an open patch of grass at Loudoun County High School in Leesburg, Chase Williams worked through team drills with the Raiders' defensive unit, rushing forward to feign a blitz at three upside-down trash cans that mimicked offensive linemen.

The movements of the 6-foot-3, 235-pound junior linebacker were quick and fluid. His size and agility have some of the top college football teams in the nation pursuing him. But it was his mere presence here, practicing in the baseball outfield on an afternoon earlier this month, that has generated the most buzz in the Loudoun football community. Many were surprised Williams would come back to the Raiders after his father, former Redskins assistant head coach Gregg Williams, signed a one-year deal to head the defense for the Jacksonville Jaguars.

"Obviously everybody knows about where his dad was going but they didn't know what [Chase] was doing," said Loudoun County quarterback Joe Bushrod, one of Chase's closest friends. Bushrod described Williams's return to the team as "real important."

Williams worked out with his teammates in the offseason even as his family researched schools in Florida. "I wasn't going to leave the team behind," he said.

"We looked into some things in Florida, and I was impressed by some of the schools," Gregg Williams said. "But Chase loves his school, he loves his coaches, he loves his teammates, he's coming off a great season there and that's where he wanted to stay."

For now, the family is spread across the eastern United States. Chase Williams and his mother, Leigh Ann, live in Leesburg, sister Amy is a freshman at Belmont University in Nashville, and his father and older brother, Blake, are part of the Jaguars' coaching staff.

It's made for a different family dynamic, Chase said. "It's different only having a couple of people in the house. But we're a close family. I talk to my brother, my dad, my sister every day on the phone or on the Internet. Nothing has changed all that much with us. We're still the same family."

And although he's not sure if his father will be able to watch him play at all this season, the modest teenager said he was happy to finally be able to focus on football.

"This is what happened, this is where I stayed, I'm happy here," he said. "So this is going to be where it's at."

For Chase, life and football always have gone hand in hand. That's the way it is when your father is a coach in the NFL.

From a young age, he remembers being around the game, playing in the locker room of the Tennessee Titans, for whom his father was defensive coordinator, running around with other coaches' kids while the team practiced.

"When the players weren't in there . . . that's where we would go," he recalled.