“Coach Banjo came up to me like, ‘Now, it’s your turn,'” Williams recalled. “So, I feel like it just gave us even more confidence, like, all right, we can go do this. Let’s go be special.”
Williams, the AFC special teams player of the week two weeks ago, fielded Corey Bojorquez‘s punt and returned it 74 yards, also going up the right sideline untouched for another touchdown to make it 14-7 with 5:45 left in the opening quarter.
“Man, it was a lot of emotions with that being my first return touchdown in my life,” said Williams, who was cut by the Jets earlier this season after a couple of mistakes before he was recently re-signed.
“With that, just how things have turned around these last few weeks, like it was a lot of emotions going into that,” he added. “Most of all, just being able to help the team win, being able to make plays, because going into this week we knew this was going to be a good defense.”
It has also been an up-and-down season for Nwangwu, who missed the Jets’ previous game with a concussion after sitting out four games with a hamstring injury suffered in Week 1.
Nwangwu tied his career best for longest touchdown return after also having a 99-yarder for the Jets last December against Seattle. He has returned five kickoffs for TDs since entering the league as a fourth-round pick of Minnesota in 2021, the most in the NFL in that span.
“Man, it was special to see both of those guys because both of those guys have had some issues up to a certain point, with Kene with some of his injuries and Isaiah what had happened early in the season and he’s just turned himself around,” coach Aaron Glenn said. “And that’s the power of believing in your players and don’t let the noise that everybody wants to talk about these guys let that bother you, and just trust those guys and build those guys up and keep developing those guys. And that’s what we’re trying to do.”
The previous time an NFL team had kickoff and punt returns for scores in the same game was Baltimore against Chicago on Oct. 15, 2017. The Chargers were the most recent team to accomplish the feat in the first quarter in 2007.
“The biggest thing on special teams, it was the challenge, like, we’ve got to be explosive in the return game,” Williams said. “And me and Kene, we took that personally.”