Niner Noise
FanSided

2019 NFL Draft fits for 49ers: Nick Bosa vs. Quinnen Williams vs. Josh Allen

By Jeremy Wohlfart

"THE PICK IS IN" for the San Francisco 49ers during the 2018 NFL Draft (Photo by Tom Pennington/Getty Images)
"THE PICK IS IN" for the San Francisco 49ers during the 2018 NFL Draft (Photo by Tom Pennington/Getty Images) /
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SANTA CLARA, CA – JANUARY 07: Quinnen Williams #92 of the Alabama Crimson Tide reacts against the Clemson Tigers in the CFP National Championship presented by AT&T at Levi’s Stadium on January 7, 2019 in Santa Clara, California. (Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images)
SANTA CLARA, CA – JANUARY 07: Quinnen Williams #92 of the Alabama Crimson Tide reacts against the Clemson Tigers in the CFP National Championship presented by AT&T at Levi’s Stadium on January 7, 2019 in Santa Clara, California. (Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images) /

No. 1: Analyzing their 2018 seasons

Players often make or break their draft stock on their final college seasons. Here’s a look at how all three finished their college careers.

Nick Bosa

Bosa will not get the nod here, as he sat out most of the season due to surgery for a muscle-core injury and then deciding to prepare for the draft.

For his three games, they were impressive — recording 14 combined tackles and three sacks while recording six tackles for a loss.

Unfortunately, they pale to the performances of the other two.

Quinnen Williams

Williams’ play reflects not merely in his stats, but his tendency to be double teamed as well as disrupt plays to allow his fellow defenders to finish up.

Williams recorded eight sacks and 19.5 tackles for loss. He recorded an amazing 71 combined tackles, and did this despite being the most targeted player on an incredibly talented Alabama team.

Williams’ most impressive game was against LSU. Against the Tigers he recorded 2.5 sacks and 3.5 tackles for loss in a 29-0 drubbing of a team that was 7-1 at the time.

For his games against Oklahoma and Clemson, Williams was solid without being great. His stats (zero sacks, 1.5 tackles for loss combined) don’t say much, but he generally performed better than those stats indicated. They weren’t an overly impressive end to his college career, but it won’t help or harm his draft stock.

Josh Allen

Allen had a monster senior season to catapult him into being a potential pick in the top three of the draft.

In Allen’s case, his final game also happened to be his best for the season.

Allen recorded an incredible 17 sacks and 21.5 total tackles for loss, this included three sacks in Kentucky’s Citrus Bowl victory against Penn State. While the 27-24 victory looks close, the score was actually 27-3 heading into the final quarter in what was an overall incredible finish to the college career of Allen.

Winner: Quinnen Williams/Josh Allen (0.5 points each)

This is where the difficulty of comparing players in different positions comes into play. If one was to look strictly at the stats as well as their bowl games, Allen would win.

If you were to consider consistently devastating disruption as well as the sheer difficulty of doing so despite constant double teaming, Williams would win.

But what also must be considered is Williams had a lot more talent around him at Alabama than Allen at Kentucky, even if Kentucky was vastly improved.

It’s an incredibly close call here, and I’ve been struggling a lot to decide, so I’m going to cheat and give half a point each to Williams and Allen who were arguably the best at their respective positions.

If I was doing this before their respective games in the 2019 College Football Playoff National Championship and the Citrus Bowl, I would probably go Williams over Allen. However I think Allen bridged the gap to make his season just as impressive.