Photo Credit: Harley Taylor
The grad transfer floodgates have opened at the FCS level with the whole division well on its way to playing spring football especially after decisions from the Missouri Valley, CAA, and many other high profile conferences to postpone. Those decisions have left plenty of top seniors looking for a place to showcase their talents before the 2021 NFL Draft including Northern Iowa CB Xavior Williams who entered the transfer portal yesterday.
Due to MVFC moving their season to the spring and my goal to play in the NFL, I have decided to enter the transfer portal. Thank you to everyone at Northern Iowa. I’m excited to see where my next journey takes me! 🙏🏽
— Xavior Williams (@xaviebaby22) August 7, 2020
Unsurprisingly, Williams has quickly received a lot of interest including from the Hokies.
Williams told us that he had phone conversations with Virginia Tech recruiting assistant Beau Davidson along with staffers at Virginia and Illinois. He has also received messages through Twitter from staffers at Iowa, West Virginia, East Carolina, and UTSA. His plans today include another phone conversation with Davidson along with a phone conversations with staffers from Utah.
His conversation with Davidson went well yesterday as he shared with us.
"I thought it was good. Going to talk more tomorrow. He said they need a corner," Williams said.
It should come as no surprise that Williams is receiving tons of interest as he was an All-Missouri Valley Conference Second Teamer last season and was a Preseason FCS All-American Third Teamer for Hero Sports this year. That came after Williams had 50 tackles, 1 interception, 13 pass breakups, and 2 fumble recoveries for Northern Iowa last season.
Tech has also embraced the grad transfer portal explosion in recent weeks especially as they entered with 5 open scholarships and have already used one landing talented Villanova WR Changa Hodge, a Preseason Second Team All-American by Hero Sports. Additionally, the Hokies are heavily pursuing JMU DB grad transfer D'Angelo Amos and may be the on-paper favorite given thatn current VT CBs coach Ryan Smith was Amos' position coach at JMU last season.
Tech will face some challenges as Amos would prefer to play closer to his home state of Iowa, but did add that he is open to playing wherever the best opportunity may be. Of course, Williams also plans to make a decision "as soon as possible" so he can quickly join his new team, telling us that he wants to make a decision "probably by next Friday."
Tech is definitely interested in Xavior Williams, but the next step now to show that the Hokies are all in for Williams is to extend him a scholarship.
