Matt Kirk tried to bring Kobe Williams to Nevada. He stood on a table for him. Then in charge of the Wolf Pack’s safeties, he assured his fellow coaches. After all, he’d coached Williams. If anyone knew what Williams could do and where he’d be limited, it was Kirk.

Williams was supposed to be greyshirtted at Long Beach City College. But he was so dominant during summer workouts, that thought was quickly ruled out. He put Williams in a three-man rotation to start the season -- a few games in, Williams didn’t leave the field. It became a two-man rotation.

He worked out against receivers that could have gone to any school they so pleased. He had been doing so since high school. Some of which were five-stars at the time. Others have since made Pro Bowls. Williams wanted to line up against all of them -- on regularity, he shut them down.

Kirk told his higher-ups in Reno all of this. Ad nauseam. It didn’t matter. There was no room to reason. Nevada defensive coordinator Jeff Casteel wouldn’t budge.

So the Wolf Pack plucked another corner from the junior college ranks -- one who, very importantly, had a few more inches over Williams.

“(He) was nowhere near as good as Kobe,” Kirk, who was Williams’ defensive coordinator at LBCC, said.

Months later, Kirk was on Nevada’s team bus. He was scrolling through Twitter, anything to take his mind off his team’s season-opening loss at Northwestern. Soon, one of his favorite players appeared on his feed.

It was a video of Kobe Williams’ first Division I college interception. In Arizona State’s first game of the 2017 season, Williams started for the Sun Devils and housed a third-quarter interception 49 yards against New Mexico State.

Watching the highlight on repeat, Kirk turned his phone and put it in the face of then-Nevada’s cornerbacks coach Courtney “Chip” Viney.

“I said, ‘Look Chip,’” Kirk remembers saying. “And he just shook his head like, ‘Damn’

“He would have been starting against Northwestern instead of New Mexico State that day,” Kirk added. “I know he wasn’t happy with me that I didn’t get it done for him at Nevada. I think when he went bigger he was like, ‘I’m going to show everybody that this wasn’t a fluke.’

*****

Kobe Williams is (listed at) 5-foot-10. That fact alone has seemed to define his football career. It’s robbed him of opportunities. The caveat that accompanies all his success has evolved into the black plague, spreading around to football coaches all across the country.

Who knows where he’d be if coaches simply looked at Williams’ film? If they weren’t so concerned with a few inches? If, perhaps, he was 6-foot-1?

Well, there would have been no reason for junior college. For his services, Arizona State would have been competing with dozens of schools. They most definitely wouldn’t have been the lone school to offer Williams. And his future after college, the NFL would surely be knocking on his door.

Instead, Kobe Williams is 5-foot-10. It’s a truth those who make football decisions can’t seem to look past.

At LBCC, Williams would often decline to meet interested college coaches. If they offered him, they offered him. If they wanted to offer him based on his film, then hand him an offer on that, he thought.

He knew exactly what would happen if he met with them. They’d look him up and down like a new car. They, of course, knew how tall they were. From there, they would compare. It never went well.

“Teams that came into our JuCo always like focused on that,” Williams said. “Then they’d tell my coach after like, ‘Oh, he’s smaller than usual size.’”

By that point, he was used to his height being a detractor.

At Long Beach Poly High School, Williams was teammates with some of the nation’s most coveted players -- cornerback Iman Marshall (USC, Baltimore Ravens), cornerback/wide receiver Jack Jones (USC, ASU), receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster (USC, Pittsburgh Steelers), defensive lineman JoJo Wicker (ASU), quarterback Malik Henry (Florida State, Nevada) and more.

In essence, there were probably college coaches around the Poly campus more than some students. Plenty of eyes to watch the Jackrabbits, to watch the corner covering Smith-Schuster and Jones, and corner playing alongside Marshall. The guy who had 31 tackles and two interceptions his senior year.

In reality, Poly’s sensational talent just overshadowed Williams. To him, that was frustrating. What was more annoying was when people would tell him a school was interested and may sign him, or that a D1 offer was bound to come. Then it didn’t.

When it comes to other people controlling his football future, Williams is a pessimist.

He’s been let down too many times to get his hopes up.

His father, Shawn, is the opposite. He’s an optimist, always the one to think positive. Of course, he’s biased about his son’s football talent, but he’s confident Williams can cover anyone. Maybe just because every father would say that or maybe because he’s seen the proof.

But as much as he’d like to will his thoughts about his son to the masses, he can’t. In that effort, he’s as helpless as Williams.

“That’s frustrating because I know he can play (with his height). Kobe’s so smart, he knows what to do if he’s facing tall receivers or bigger bodies.” Shawn said. “He’ll go out there and battle no matter what.

“Just give him a chance and they’ll see for themselves that he’ll come in there and perform. He’ll do the rest.”

*****

In early 2017, DeMonte King called Williams after class. He delivered the news they had dreamed of, the news that would finally be their ticket out of junior college. Then a safety for LBCC, King told Williams ASU was in on them.

Here we go again, Williams thought. His pessimism ran high. He was skeptical, ensuring his hopes never spiked. But ASU’s defensive coordinator at the time, Phil Bennett, he was different.

Bennett was a new hire to Todd Graham’s staff, in Tempe to fix what was one of the worst secondary’s in the country. If nothing else, he needed bodies. On top of that, Bennett was an old-school coach, more keen on a player’s football IQ and film over their measurements.

Sure enough, King’s claim was valid. The Sun Devils offered the pair. That February, both signed.

"First thing I thought when I got this scholarship is that this thing I'm doing can't stop," Williams told Devils Digest in 2018. "I had to have the mindset that nobody really gave me a chance. I play this way for ASU because they gave me that chance, every day, every practice."

Added Shawn: “It was real exciting. We worked hard trying to get that boy a scholarship offer. It was hard, it wasn’t easy … It was killing him, it was hurting him. He knew he was a good football player but it was always about size.”

Before his first fall camp in Tempe, Bennett told his newest corner to go prove himself. That was easy, that was all he had ever done. So just like at Long Beach Poly, he found the best receiver. In this case, it was sophomore N’Keal Harry, a big-bodied wide-out who, two years later, was a first-round pick.

What better way to prove something than defending the team’s best receiver, who just happened to have six inches and 50 pounds on Williams? He knew Graham “wasn’t going to feel you from the jump because you’re little,” he said. So he did everything and anything to make the coaches forget he was little.

A few weeks later, he started in ASU’s first game -- and a certain tweet ticked off Kirk during a long bus ride.

When Graham was fired following the 2017 season and Bennett subsequently retired, Williams admitted he was nervous. He finally had coaches believe in him, coaches that started him at the DI level. All of a sudden, they were gone, Williams’ standing with his coaches in flux once again.

Herm Edwards would, of course, take over the program. And Tony White followed defensive coordinator Danny Gonzales from San Diego State to work with ASU’s cornerbacks. To welcome them, Williams had his best camp of his life that spring.

Gonzales brought in his complicated 3-3-5 defense. The scheme initially tripped up most of the Sun Devil defenders. It was confusing. Its intricacies befuddled everyone. But Williams' football IQ was off the charts, he’s been watching film since he could walk. He took to the scheme quicker than anyone and never looked back.

“He’s used to stuff thrown at him,” White said. “There’s a reason why Kobe is Kobe. He’s been dealing with (doubt) his whole life. It’s nothing new, water off his back … He’s what they all should be -- a guy who everyone counted out and all of a sudden, this guy is doing big things.”

In every sense of the phrase, the Williams' are a football family. They talk about football together. They watch football together. It wouldn’t be uncommon to stroll into their house, only to see all five of them crowded around the TV, watching a game.

And, like, any game. College, NFL, a replay of one of Kobe’s games. Heck, when Shawn coached his son in Pop Warner, he used to invite the whole team over to watch and talk over their last game. Then they would turn on the film of their next opponent and begin formulating a game plan.

Kobe was 10.

“It turned him into a good filmaholic. This is a football house,” Shawn said. “It made him smarter toward the game.”

When LBCC cornerbacks coach James Wheeler huddled his group together to start advance scouting that week’s opponent, he knew Williams probably didn’t need to be there. He’d already done his own film study, already learned who the best players were, what routes they like to run, what plays they call against certain schemes, etc.

“He would definitely do his own research,” Wheeler, now the cornerbacks coach at College of the Canyons, admitted. “In my time being a JuCo coach, it’s pretty rare that you’d have a guy who pretty much already knows his opponent, watched film or done the research to know who their go-to guys are.”

Perhaps that’s what Williams needed to do. He always feels the need to prove something, to prove to people his height doesn’t matter. He wants people to judge him off his performance on the field because, there, he knew he could overcome his height.

Kobe Williams can never be the tallest person on the field. But, he’ll make damn sure he’s the smartest.

“Him being a smaller player, I think he had to add that to his game to excel because, no matter what level you play on, if they see a smaller-sized corner, they’re going to attack that corner,” Wheeler said. “That’s what I think took him over the edge.”

*****

For as long as he plays football, Williams will have something to prove. His stature has ensured that.

The Sun Bowl on New Year’s Eve will be his final collegiate game. Aside from a migraine that kept him out of the Cal game this season, Williams started every contest of his ASU career. Not bad for a guy who didn’t have a DI offer out of high school.

In terms of defensive grades, Williams was a Top 10 corner in the Pac-12 last season. And in his senior year, he was even better. He was thrown at 41 times and allowed just 20 receptions and a pair of scores. According to Pro Football Focus’ grades, he was a Top 30 corner in the country.

But he’s 5-10. So, naturally, as well as unfairly, he was left off the All-Pac-12 teams and has gone nameless in nearly every mock draft. He’s used to that. So, too, are his coaches.

They envision that he’ll be converted into a nickel corner at the next level. They also firmly believe that, even if his name isn’t called during the draft, a team will give him a shot. And just like they once were, that team will be thankful.

“It always ends up being that 10 guys will pass and one will bite. And that one guy is happy every time he bites,” Kirk said, describing his time marketing smaller JuCo players. “And then (the other) guys will come back and say, ‘Oh yeah, we dropped the ball on him.’”

In Williams’ football future, there have been few certainties. He doesn’t plan on that changing. And throughout the draft process, he’ll never get his hopes up.

There’s always been a chip on his shoulder. It started when, at Long Beach Poly, he was passed up by every Division I school. Then, all but one of those schools refused to offer him after junior college. Then, despite next-level consistency at ASU, recognition eluded him.

It’s OK. All that fuels Williams. At every step, he’s had to prove something to someone. In some ways, that’s made him better, hungrier, more determined.

“That keeps that huger in you, keeping that chip on your shoulder, Shawn admitted. “I really hope he keeps that chip on his shoulder. That isn’t going to do anything but carry him all the way to the next level.”

Williams is just hoping someone gives him a chance at the next level. And once that happens -- well, he hasn’t squandered an opportunity yet.

“He had one college offer and made the best of it … That’s a story, Man,” Shawn said. “I told him, ‘This is going to be a story. And we have to finish the story.’”

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