Being named a team MVP is similar in process to winning a pentathlon. You may or may not be the best at swimming, sword play, obstacle avoidance, shooting and running, but if you’re the best at all five combined, you win a gold medal. Or in the case of the Jets players weighing, say, five qualities of each of their teammates — big-play ability, versatility, work ethic, opportunism and determination — you are chosen MVP.
A week ago, Jets wide receiver/kick returner Isaiah Williams wasn’t thinking in terms of honors and pats on the back. “The biggest thing on my mind is this team and us growing every week and getting better,” he said then. “If accolades come, that’d be a blessing. But honestly, it hasn’t been on my mind at all.”
Then accolades came Williams’ way Friday morning at the team meeting when he was named the Jets’ Curtis Martin Team Most Valuable Player by a vote of his Green & White peers. His reaction upon being bestowed with the 65th annual MVP award: “It’s a blessing.”
Williams may have first been on his teammates’ minds because of seemingly unscalable early-season hurdles. Signed off Cincinnati’s practice squad after the season started, he had returned a few kicks for the Jets until Game 4 at Miami, when he committed a pair of second-half return mistakes — he fumbled away the second-half kickoff at the Jets 36, then fair-caught a punt at the Jets 3. He was waived the next week.
What chance did an originally undrafted free agent, released by his third team in less than a year, have in the NFL?
“In that moment after I got cut, I knew that God still had good plans for my life,” Williams said. “But if you would have told me I would be Team MVP by the end of the season, I would have probably looked at you crazy, if I’m being honest. After I got cut, I thought I was going to be on practice squad for the rest of the year just working, getting better. And then if the opportunity came, it came.”
Two days later, he was re-signed to the Jets’ practice squad, and a week after that he was back on the active roster. And he hasn’t looked back since.
“It’s been tremendous,” special teams coordinator Chris Banjo said of Williams’ season. “To see the way he started the year and what he’s been able to do since, his commitment to who he is as a person but also his growth and development as a player, has been really cool to see.”
