COLUMBIA, Mo. — Kristian Williams doesn’t dress to look cool. And he certainly doesn’t dress to feel cool, temperature-ly speaking.
The Missouri defensive tackle dresses practically, which is to say he dresses for practice — even when he doesn’t need to.
Like wearing shoulder pads to team meetings.
“It’s just a matter of staying ready so you don’t have to get ready,” Williams told the Post-Dispatch, as gearing up to dissect film or schemes is an obvious new fashion trend.
“It saves you time, too,” Williams continued, “Whenever you have your pads on in meetings and right after meetings and stuff of that nature, you can go down to the field and just talk to yourself, listen to yourself — positive self-talk, just to get in that mode before you go into practice.”
That’s the pro. Two cons come with a defensive lineman sitting in meeting rooms that are essentially sleek lecture halls of various sizes.
“My shoulder pads might be in the way,” Williams admitted, “but it’s just the fact that my shoulders are kind of big.”
And: “It feels kind of uncomfortable just because it’s kind of hot.”
So wearing pads to meetings is not completely cool.
But nobody’s questioning Williams, a Mizzou captain and the lone returner from last year’s defensive tackle rotation. Amid quite a bit of turnover across the Tigers’ defense, which exported several players to the NFL, Williams is an important presence for the Tigers, who are riding a season-opening shutout into Saturday’s game against Buffalo.
“It was major to get him back because you don’t want to lose the whole group, right?” defensive line coach Al Davis said. “The kid, he had a decision to make, to be honest with you. I do believe that Kristian got here and he found something at Mizzou that he didn’t have at his previous school. He did make plays. I think the kid’s smart enough to know that he left some plays out there.”
In the offseason, the MU coaching staff made a video reel of clips showing a handful of plays they felt Williams left on the table last season — evidence they thought he still had another leap to take with Missouri.
“He wants to grow,” Davis said.
Growth is precisely why Williams’ collegiate career started rather far from Mizzou.
Recruiting services split over whether Williams was a three- or four-star prospect when he was coming out Southwind High School in the Memphis area. He was an all-state talent during his senior season, when he recorded seven sacks, recovered three fumbles and notched a 75-yard scoop-and-score touchdown.
Mizzou — at that time coached by Barry Odom — offered Williams a scholarship. He opted to head west, playing his first three seasons at Oregon.
The Ducks redshirted Williams as a freshman, then gave him a limited run during the pandemic-shortened 2020 season. After appearing in 14 games during the 2021 season, Williams entered the transfer portal.
“I just wanted to try something new, just get away from the city and grow up on my own,” Williams said on a Tiger Talk radio show about picking Oregon. “With that transition, I wouldn’t trade it for the world because I wouldn’t be who I am today if I didn’t make that decision.”
In the portal and taking his official visit to Mizzou, Williams went for a walk with MU coach Eli Drinkwitz that took them onto Faurot Field, where a hype video played on the video board.
“I just got chills,” Williams said. “The moment after the video, he said, ‘If you want to come up here and sign to ball, come do it.’ ”
So he did.
Williams has appeared in every game for the Tigers since transferring in ahead of the 2022 season, making 22 starts. He has 10 tackles for a loss, three passes defended and two forced fumbles in that span.
Ahead of the 2024 season, Williams slimmed down. After playing the 2022 and 2023 seasons at 314 pounds, he’s listed at 295.
“He looks lean and mean,” Davis said.
Talk to Williams, and it’s clear he’s not really mean at all. He laughs a lot, sometimes at his own tendencies.
Mizzou players gravitate toward their teammate with a well-known personality.
“Kristian is one of the guys, he does everything right,” said Chris McClellan, the Florida transfer who starts alongside Williams. “You should always try to emulate that”
MU wants Williams to be expressive. That’s what Drinkwitz encouraged when he picked Williams to be one of the Tigers’ three representatives at Southeastern Conference media days.
“Go out there, be yourself,” Williams told himself at that event. “Take advantage of the opportunity itself. Just be you. Go out, have fun. Keep your head high, be confident about what you’re saying. Just the ordinary tips to be able to get me over the hump on certain things.”
Since then, he was voted into the captaincy — a role that seemed likely from the outside but evidently caught Williams by a little bit of surprise.
“I’d never seen myself being a captain or anything like that,” he said. “I never even thought of it as me being a captain, but more so like a big brother to everybody — just to be able to get people out of those hard times.”
Williams has warmed to the idea of coaching once his playing career is over, perhaps with that “big brother to everybody” attitude in mind. Going into coaching would require him to set aside a separate career ambition that makes the tackle stand out in the Mizzou locker room: storm chasing.
“It’s still in motion,” Williams said. “I have a couple of different avenues I want to go into. But if that opportunity arises, I’m taking it.”
To make sure this is going into the record correctly, in case any storm-chaser hiring managers are reading: Kristian Williams isn’t interested in the kind of meteorology work that involves news studios and greenscreens but being exposed on rural highways driving after the real, terrifying things?
“Yes, most definitely,” he said.
Why on earth would someone want to do that?
“You see something so supernatural to the point where you want to know exactly what’s going on,” Williams said. “You want to know how it’s causing all this destruction. It’s just fascinating to look at — who doesn’t want to see an F5 tornado?”
Touché? Point taken? If nothing else, perhaps proximity to tornadoes is why Williams transferred from Oregon to Missouri.
He enjoyed watching the new Twisters film — “Great movie. Got me sitting on the edge of my seat,” he said — which fits his affinity for the meteorological and destructive.
Finding that kind of enjoyment is a priority for Williams as he enters his final season of college football. He’s aware that 2024 is the last ride. What that knowledge prompts him to do embodies Williams’ approach to being a teammate and captain.
“I was telling myself, it’s the last first day,” he said after the Tigers’ first day of spring practices. “I started to feel like I wasn’t really present. Today, I was just trying to have fun with my brothers.”
‘He’s just Luther’: Mizzou wideout Burden in dual roles as elite player, NIL star
Why Mizzou uses unusual defensive formation in 3rd-and-long situations
Prep for Buffalo and is Mizzou's schedule getting stronger? Eye on the Tigers
