How Panthers lineman went from loading Amazon trucks to signing with hometown team

DeShawn Williams never quit on football, though at times it certainly looked like football had quit on him.

The Panthers defensive lineman had been put through the NFL wringer — he was released from four teams from 2015 to 2019 — and when the COVID-19 pandemic was going strong in the summer of 2020, Williams found himself wrapping shipping pallets and loading delivery trucks for Amazon and UPS in Aurora, Colorado.

He’d signed a contract with the Calgary Stampeders for the 2020 season, but the pandemic forced the Canadian Football League to suspend operations.

So he worked, helping move much-needed packages from warehouses to online shoppers who preferred to have items — masks, hand sanitizers, toilet paper — delivered to their front doors instead of going to stores during the pandemic.

But even with his football career on hold, the South Carolina native continued to grind. For six months, Williams woke up at 5 a.m. to train for potential on-field opportunities before heading to a shipping warehouse for his day job.

Williams, 30, never gave up on himself, and his perseverance is one reason he’s in Carolina now — playing for the team he grew up cheering for.

He also credits his wife, Ashlee, who pushed him to succeed — especially during the darkest times.

“We’ve been through every emotion,” Williams said. “We’ve been through the good, we’ve been through the bad, we’ve been through the ugly through this game. Sometimes, I’ve had to lean on her for encouragement. She never showed too many emotions, but I think when I was out of football for a good year, and when COVID hit, that’s when all the pain and the ‘what-ifs’ and the not knowing came out from the both of us.”

That all changed in August 2020, when then-Denver Broncos defensive line coach Bill Kollar called him during one of his warehouse shifts at UPS.

Kollar offered Williams an invitation to Broncos training camp, and because the CFL had suspended operations, the lineman was able to get out of his deal with Calgary and sign with Denver in time for camp. While he failed to make the initial 53-man roster in 2020, he stuck to the Broncos’ practice squad before being quickly elevated to the active roster. From there, Williams found his footing in the NFL, and he has never looked back.

Williams’ unlikely path from fringe practice-squad player to warehouse worker to first-wave free-agent signee is extremely uncommon in the NFL, according to Jeffery Whitney, Williams’ agent.

“If a player doesn’t play for a full NFL season, if he’s not on a roster in some capacity, that’s usually the end of it,” Whitney said. “It’s very rare for a player to be able to get back to the NFL if he sits out a full cycle in a full season.”

Ashlee, who worked as a volleyball coach during the family’s time in Colorado, never wavered in her belief of her husband — even during his hiatus from the NFL that lasted nearly an entire year.

“Throughout the whole time, I was just really, I was almost mad about it because I knew he was good enough to play in the NFL,” Ashlee said. “And so when the CFL stuff came about, I just didn’t want to hear anything about it because I knew he was NFL-caliber and like he was so talented.”

Ashlee’s evaluation of her husband turned out to be true.

Williams will arrive in Spartanburg, S.C., for his ninth NFL training camp this week. The 6-foot-1, 292-pound lineman signed a one-year, $1.75 million contract with Carolina during the first wave of free agency in March.

According to those who know him best, Williams’ career journey has conditioned the lineman to never waste an opportunity to prove himself, which is exactly what he plans to do as camp begins at Wofford College.

Career on the fringe

Williams entered the NFL as an undrafted defensive lineman out of Clemson. Williams was undersized but quick, and he impressed the Bengals, who signed him as a rookie ahead of their 2015 training camp.

Williams spent three years bouncing back and forth from Cincinnati’s practice squad to its active roster. He made his NFL debut on Dec. 4, 2016, with the Bengals against the Philadelphia Eagles. However, his time on the game-day roster was limited to just four games as the Bengals closed out a 6-9-1 season.

After spending the 2017 season on the Bengals practice squad, Williams signed a contract with the Broncos in 2018. He was waived following the preseason and then signed to the practice squad — a job that lasted a couple of weeks. Roughly a month later, Williams had a short stint with the Miami Dolphins’ practice squad.

Williams was then picked up by the Indianapolis Colts’ practice squad toward the end of the 2018 season. Despite the constant turmoil of being a practice squad player, Williams was never deterred.

“I never had one coach or GM tell me that I couldn’t play,” Williams said.

But when the Colts cut Williams in 2019, the defensive lineman said he had an emotional conversation with Frank Reich, who is now his head coach again in Carolina. Williams told Reich that he had no Plan B outside of football.

“Football is all I do,” Williams said. “Like I told him, I don’t do it for the money, I do it because I’m good at it and it’s my calling. And when I said that, we just had a heart-to-heart moment.”

The Broncos brought Williams back for a second time in 2019. But, again, he was cut ahead of Week 1, and he spent the season watching from home. While he would eventually get signed by the Stampeders in 2020, the pandemic forced Williams to find a regular job to help make ends meet.

When Kollar called Williams to offer him a third chance with the Broncos, the NFL nomad jumped at the opportunity and quit his warehouse job in August 2020. Williams didn’t make the Broncos’ initial 53-man roster that summer, but he was offered a job on the practice squad.

Williams quickly earned his way onto the Broncos’ game-day roster during the first month of the 2020 season. In 14 games (11 starts), Williams made 37 tackles, two sacks and an interception. In 2021, Williams made the roster again and collected 39 tackles and a sack in 15 regular-season games (eight starts).

Ejiro Evero, who at the time was a first-year defensive coordinator, arrived in Denver in 2022 as part of a regime change. Evero hired Dom Capers — the Panthers’ first head coach — as his senior assistant after working under him in Green Bay in 2016.

Williams, as a roster holdover from the previous staff, needed to prove himself to the new coaches. Capers came away impressed with Williams’ work ethic and speed during their first summer together in Denver.

“He’s obviously not the biggest guy in the world, but I think that he knows he can use his quickness — and he’s explosive,” Capers said.

Linebacker Alex Singleton, who also joined the Broncos last season, enjoyed playing behind Williams because of his ability to read and react quickly. With Williams in front of him, Singleton said he could make his move toward ball-carriers with little hesitation.

Singleton, who dealt with a similar football nomad-like experience early in his career, believes Williams’ early NFL adversity has made him more dedicated to his craft.

“You’re not given a second chance a lot in the NFL, so when guys have to take advantage of every opportunity they get, I think you can just see that when someone is working,” Singleton said. “With DeShawn, it was like every day, you could just tell, if his opportunity came, he was going to take full advantage of it.”

‘Coming into fruition’

Despite the Broncos’ major struggles last season, Williams had a career year. The veteran defender helped anchor Evero’s unit with 37 tackles, a career-high 4.5 sacks and three pass breakups.

When Evero and Capers left Denver for Carolina this offseason, they set their sights on Williams, who became an unrestricted free agent in March.

“Obviously, he knows the defense because he played in the defense for a year and played different roles within the defense,” Capers said. “And we just felt like, you knew what you were getting in DeShawn because you’ve been with him. You like the guy, you like the teammate, you like the effort.”

Williams grew up a Panthers fan while living in Central, about 30 miles southwest of Greenville, South Carolina. He even calls himself a Panthers “historian,” with his own Mount Rushmore list that features Julius Peppers, Steve Smith, Luke Kuechly and Mike Rucker. DeShaun Foster just missed the cut, and Dan Morgan, Mike Minter and Stephen Davis deserve an honorable mention, according to Williams.

Panthers pride is part of what makes this homecoming so special for Williams and his family. He still remembers Smith and Muhsin Mohammad making huge plays in Super Bowl 38. He even rooted for Cam Newton and Carolina in Super Bowl 50, despite being a member of the Bengals.

After chipping away at his NFL dream for years, Williams will now play in the same stadium as his NFL role models. And his 16-month-old son, Titan, will get to watch his dad play in the colors that Williams once wore as a fan during his own childhood.

“Everything is coming into fruition,” Williams said. “Not that there aren’t going to be any bad times, but to me, personally, I feel like everything that we went through — I can’t be broken, I’ve been through the worst of the worst.”

Williams’ agent, Whitney, has represented Williams since before his warehouse days. Whitney likes to use Williams’ story as a lesson in perseverance and self-belief for his younger clients. During the past three summers, Whitney has invited Williams to speak to his rookie clients at a summit in Miami.

“It’s been absolutely the most amazing story that I’ve been a part of,” Whitney said. “But I’ll say that even in DeShawn’s darkest days, darkest times when he was working at those places, UPS and Amazon, he would call me and give me some energy and uplift me. He never once pointed a finger, never once felt sorry for himself, at least outwardly to me. Never once, blamed anything. He simply just worked.”

Williams has gone from being an NFL afterthought to becoming a locker room leader in Carolina. And with a grueling gauntlet of practices awaiting him in Spartanburg, the journeyman is entering the summer with a completely different outlook than any other point in his football career.

But that won’t change his mindset at all.

“I’ve been cut 10 times, I done heard every excuse why I got cut, and things like that,” Williams said. “But now, to work how I work, and not want to get cut again, I just know from a mental aspect, I’m much stronger and I can just go out there, and knowing myself, that I’ve been to hell and back. And how my work ethic is, I just know that there’s nothing I cannot do. ”

A previous version of this story incorrectly stated the Panthers played in Super Bowl 37. The story has been corrected to reflect that the Panthers played against the Patriots in Super Bowl 38.

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