Arkansas basketball assistant was once a surprise NFL Draft pick

Arkansas assistant coach Corey Williams directs his players Friday, Nov. 22, 2019, during the second half of play against South Dakota in Bud Walton Arena in Fayetteville.

FAYETTEVILLE — It’s been almost 30 years since University of Arkansas assistant basketball coach Corey Williams played cornerback for the Kansas City Chiefs at a mini-camp, but Herm Edwards hasn’t forgotten him.

Edwards is now Arizona State’s head football coach, but he was the Chiefs’ defensive backs coach when Kansas City selected Williams in the 12th round of the 1992 NFL Draft.

Williams was a starting guard at Oklahoma State for Coach Eddie Sutton and helped the Cowboys make the 1992 NCAA Tournament as a senior. He hadn’t played football since the ninth grade at Macon (Ga.) Northeast High School and had no idea the Chiefs were interested in him.

“I remember going and watching Corey play basketball against Kansas and being impressed with him,” Edwards said this week in a telephone interview. “We played a system where we liked big, long cornerbacks that could run and were physical. Corey fit that mold.”

Williams was 6-2 and 190 pounds, and he ran the 40-yard dash in 4.28 seconds.

The way Williams played defense for Oklahoma State — with hand-checking that was allowed in college basketball in the early 1990s — also impressed Edwards.

“Watching him play basketball, you could see he was a good defender and a physical guy,” Edwards said. “You saw his running and jumping, all this athleticism.

“I just thought a lot of traits he had as a basketball player would transfer over to football.”

Williams was taking an afternoon nap when Chiefs Coach Marty Schottenheimer called his dorm room during the draft.

Williams had told his brother and roommate, Donnie, not to wake him up no matter who called. But Donnie Williams decided his brother should talk to Schottenheimer.

“Coach Schottenheimer told me the Chiefs were getting ready to draft me,” Williams said. “After we hung up, I called my mom and told her, ‘Mom, turn on the TV to ESPN. You’re not going to believe this, I’m fixing to get picked in the NFL Draft.’

“She said, ‘Boy, stop lying. You didn’t play college football.’ I said, ‘Mom, I’m telling you, I’m fixing to get drafted.’ Then my name came across the bottom of the screen and we started screaming. Then we started crying.”

Williams was the 325th overall pick.

“Corey was a little bit of a reach,” Edwards said. “But when you’re that far into the draft at the 12th round, you’re saying, ‘Let’s just pick a good athlete that we can try to train.’ ”

No Oklahoma State football players were drafted from a team that finished 0-10-1 in 1991. Williams was the only Cowboys student-athlete picked in the 1992 NFL Draft.

A week later, Williams was in Kansas City for a mini-camp.

“I was at cornerback playing man-to-man defense and I made some plays,” Williams said. “We’d be watching film of practice and you’d see a hand knock away a pass.

“Everybody would go, ‘Who was that?’ Somebody would say, ‘That was the basketball player.’ ”

Edwards, who became an NFL head coach for the New York Jets and Chiefs, said Williams impressed him in practice.

“At camp he did fairly well for a guy who hadn’t played college football,” Edwards said. “He needed work on his technique, but you could see he had ball skills. He had good instincts and he understood where the ball was — things you can’t teach.

“I really thought he could play cornerback in the league, because I had played the position and I knew what it took.”

A couple of months after the Chiefs picked Williams, he was a second-round choice by the two-time champion Chicago Bulls in the 1992 NBA Draft.

Williams signed with the Bulls and was a reserve player in his only season with the team when Chicago won a third consecutive NBA title. He never went back to football, had a brief stint back in the NBA with Minnesota, played in the CBA for Oklahoma City and Grand Rapids and finished his pro career in 1998 in Taiwan.

“Before the NBA Draft, I was thinking, ‘Well, maybe Corey won’t make it in the NBA and he’ll be back with us,’ ” Edwards said. “But when he got drafted by the Bulls and was going to get to play on the same team as Michael Jordan, I knew it was bye-bye for the Chiefs.”

Arkansas Coach Eric Musselman hired Williams as an assistant after he was fired as Stetson’s head coach.

“Corey is a guy that does a great job with life skills with our players,” Musselman said. “He is a very spiritual man. Our guys like to confide in Corey. They like to lean on him.

“He does a great job for us in recruiting and he does a great job for us on the floor, and he does a great job in-game.”

Edwards said he’s glad Williams became a coach.

“He was a great young man in the little time I spent coaching him,” Edwards said. “He was a bright guy, a student of the game.

“Now he’s giving back back to the game as a coach, which is great to see.”