FRISCO — If it weren’t for the buzzing of a razor, this weekly half-hour haircut might be silent. Just as Jermaine Williams expects. He’s been cutting hair since 1999, which means he understands the range of conversations that can be shared between a person and their barber. This specific client is unique.
“You might only get one or two words out of him,” Jermaine said.
It was no different late last Saturday night in Jersey City, N.J., when Jermaine arrived at the Dallas Cowboys’ team hotel for his weekly haircut with his son, Javonte. They talk daily, sometimes three times a day. With the Cowboys’ Week 5 game against the Jets less than 24 hours away, however, the white noise of a haircut filled the hotel room.
Cowboys running back Javonte Williams sits for his weekly haircut from his father, Jermaine, before the game against the Packers.
Courtesy of Williams family
Cowboys
“He just transforms into a different person,” Jermaine said.
Fitting, because Javonte has transformed his NFL career in Dallas this year.
There was a point recently where Williams thought his career was on the verge of ending. He aspires to be unstoppable, and yet there were things the last few years holding him back. A devastating knee injury in 2022 started Williams down an unrecognizable football path.
With the Cowboys this year, Williams has rediscovered himself. He’s transformed into one of the league’s best running backs through five weeks. He’s third in the NFL in rushing with 447 yards. He has more rushing yards after contact (357) than total rushing yards for all but six running backs in the NFL. He’s already set a career high in rushing touchdowns in a season with five, in five weeks.
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“He’s a quiet guy, but when he gets on the field, he turns into the Terminator,” said wide receiver KaVontae Turpin, who sits next to Williams in the locker room. “He turns into that metal stuff, and it’s hard to get him.”
Williams has given the Cowboys everything they asked for and more when they prioritized signing him in free agency.
It begs the question: What, exactly, did they see that everyone else didn’t? What was so glaringly obvious to them that wasn’t obvious to the Denver Broncos, the team that drafted him and had him the last four years?
You can tell that Cowboys head coach Brian Schottenheimer, the self-described President of the Javonte Williams Fan Club, is getting tired of this inquiry.
“I guess I’ll probably repeat myself a little bit,” he prefaces, “but it was the physical playstyle.”
Dallas Cowboys running back Javonte Williams catches a ball during a practice at The Star on Wednesday, Aug. 20, 2025, in Frisco.
Smiley N. Pool / Staff Photographer
Two-way star
It’s worth noting this isn’t the path Williams originally wanted to walk. Instead of being unstoppable, he wanted to be the one stopping people. He grew up watching highlights of Hall of Fame hard-hitting defenders such as Steve Atwater and John Lynch at the encouragement of his father, a physical linebacker in his playing days. Jermaine wore a white helmet when he played high school football, and instead of judging his performance by normal standards, he would judge it by how many colored marks were left from the jersey and helmet of the opposing team.
The apple didn’t fall far from the tree. The parents of the flag football players Javonte would hit when he was 6 years old would agree.
“A lot of guys I went to school with and they would say he hits like you,” Jermaine recalled, “but he’s hitting just a little bit harder.”
That fact was obvious to Kevin Motsinger when he took over as the head coach at Wallace-Rose Hill High School in Teachey, N.C., in 2017. He watched as much film as he could about his newest team. Williams’ physicality stuck out. He had hundreds of tackles combined in his sophomore and junior seasons, helping Wallace-Rose Hill win state championships both years.
Despite that production, college recruiting interest didn’t come. Jermaine said they had hopes Javonte would grow to 6-1 after a growth spurt his junior season, but Javonte settled around the 5-10 mark. That made a difference on his recruiting interest as a linebacker or safety.
Motsinger believed Williams would have better luck generating interest if he played running back, too. He planned to play Williams on offense and defense, until he noticed something: He would get tired. It didn’t make sense to him. He saw the work Williams put in during the offseason. He knew he was in shape; yet there was evident exhaustion.
“Then I finally figured it out,” Motsinger said. “He literally gave all he had. He was the lady who gave three pennies. And when you give it everything you have on every play, you have nothing left.”
They decided, with his future in mind, that Williams would only play running back. It paid off. He ran for 2,271 rushing yards and 27 touchdowns in his lone season as a full-time running back.
Williams was so good, Motsinger said, that he would tell all the college coaches he knew that Williams — without any scholarship offers — was better than Zamir White, the No. 1 running back in the country in the Class of 2018. White played nearly two hours west.
Eventually, after starring at North Carolina — his lone FBS scholarship offer — Williams was a second-round pick by the Broncos in the 2021 NFL draft. White, who playing at Georgia, was drafted in the fourth round of the 2022 draft by the Raiders.
“They all told me I was nuts … and it turns out I was right,” Motsinger said, reflecting on the conversations he had with college coaches.
Motsinger admits he gets goosebumps when he thinks about the success Williams is having with the Cowboys. He says he’s too busy to watch games, between being a coach and a husband, but his sons keep him updated. After the season opener, one of his sons texted saying Pookie — Javonte’s nickname — was back to playing how he was before his 2022 ACL and PCL tears in his knee.
“He looks like his old self,” Motsinger recalled the text reading.
Dallas Cowboys running back Javonte Williams (33) leapt and stepped off New York Giants safety Tyler Nubin (27) as he headed for the end zone in the fourth quarter at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, September 14, 2025. Williams came up short but the team scored thereafter. The Cowboys won in overtime, 40-37.
Tom Fox / Staff Photographer
Seizing opportunity
It took time to get there.
Williams starred as a rookie for the Broncos. He averaged 4.4 yards per carry, sparking optimism about what he could do in his second season with a larger role. He was living up to those hopes until he had the knee injury — his first major injury.
The injury not only affected Williams physically, but it altered him mentally.
“From him being that physical, dominant player, to me having to help him up and do stuff he had to take care of, it started to get to him a little bit,” his father said.
Motsinger could see it, too.
“I guarantee you — I’ll bet everything I’ve got — that he did everything he was told to do,” Motsinger said, “and it just didn’t come back. That had to just eat him alive. Because if he’s going to do something, he’s going to do it right, and he’s going to do it Mach 2 [speed] with his hair on fire at 100%.”
Williams averaged 3.6 yards per carry the season after the knee injury. Last season, in his final season with the Broncos, he averaged 3.7 yards per attempt.
Williams hit free agency for the first time, wondering what was next.
“There was a time I thought it was going to be over with,” he said.
The Cowboys believed he was just getting started. They elected to start anew in their backfield this offseason. Rico Dowdle — now with the Panthers — ran for more than 1,000 yards last season for Dallas. He was a free agent, too. On the first day of free agency, the Cowboys made their choice, signing Williams to a one-year deal worth $3 million.
“Rico was a guy that we considered keeping,” Schottenheimer said, “and we kind of fell in love with Javonte.”
They fell in love with the physicality, in running and in pass protection. They were enamored with his contact balance and his ability to evade big hits from defenders. They’d become even bigger fans of Williams when he arrived.
“I get it. The injury sucked. It took him a little while to get back, but then you’re around him, and you see he’s all about football,” Schottenheimer said. “So when we talk about a guy that competes every day to be the best version of himself, he gives us everything he has on Monday, today, and on Wednesday he will and on Friday he will, Saturday at the walkthrough he will. How can you not want to have a guy like that on your roster?”
For as much as Williams has given the Cowboys, they’ve given him something, too. They’ve believed in him, and they’ve given him an opportunity — something he’s run with so far. The Cowboys didn’t envision having one bell-cow back in their system, but Williams has become it.
Jermaine can still recall the night his son called to tell him he was going to the Cowboys. There was evident excitement and relief.
“I could hear it in his voice,” Jermaine said, “and I knew that’s where he wanted to be.”
Now, when Jermaine does his weekly haircut with his son, they don’t have to talk about it. Jermaine can tell how happy his son is. So he continues to cut, letting the sound from the razor fill the room.
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