Kyle Williams in position for Pro Bowl

ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. -- What is Kyle Williams?

Is he a nose tackle? Is he a defensive end?

Buffalo Bills head coach Chan Gailey balks at categorizing him. Williams himself can't really declare either.

One thing's for sure: Williams is a quality defensive lineman wherever he lines up and deserves to be selected for the Pro Bowl.

"Kyle's not a typical anything," Gailey said. "He really isn't. He's an amazing guy. He's got unusual quickness, unusual competitiveness, unusual strength.

"He just doesn't have the body that everybody thinks is a typical noseguard. Everything else is typical noseguard except faster."

Williams officially is listed as a nose tackle. He leads the Bills and all NFL nose tackles with five sacks, an unusually high amount for that position. Nose tackles often come off the field on passing downs. He has recorded a team-high 13 tackles for loss.

Tackles aren't an official stat, but in-game statisticians say Williams leads all NFL defensive linemen with 60, while the Bills' coaching film credits him with 72.

Versatility has been Williams' biggest asset. He has lined up over the center, outside the tackle and every gap in between. He'll need to be even more adaptable with defensive end Dwan Edwards likely out with a hamstring injury for Sunday's game against the Minnesota Vikings.

"You can either play football, or you can't," Williams said, a comment that might appear arrogant in print but comes off humble in his Louisianan twang. "If you allow me to go out and just play and get after guys, I don't really care what we're doing. I could get the job done no matter what they're asking me to do."

Williams wasn't sure what would happen when the Bills' new coaching staff converted them into a 3-4 defense.

He had a great 2009 season. In just 14 games he collected a career-high four sacks as a 4-3 defensive tackle. FootballOutsiders.com credited him with nine hits and 13 hurries. His nine hits ranked fourth among all NFL defensive tackles behind Darnell Dockett, Kevin Williams and Cory Redding. Dockett and Kevin Williams were Pro Bowlers last year.

Another remarkable stat from Football Outsiders: Kyle Williams made 8.6 percent of the Bills' defensive plays (tackles, pass deflections, interceptions, fumbles forced and fumble recoveries) in his 14 games last year. No other NFL defensive tackle made that many.

"I didn't know how [the new 3-4 defense] was going to look as far as what they were going to be asking me to do," Kyle Williams said. "I knew that I could be productive no matter what they were asking me to do.

"They tell me what they want me to do and how they want me to play certain things. Then there's other defenses that we're in and they just want me to go out and just play and make some things happen."

Williams has been generating some Pro Bowl buzz lately. That's tough for a defensive lineman to do on a 2-9 club with the 26th total defense and absolute worst run defense.

"It would be a great honor," Williams said. "but at this point, the way the year's gone for us, it'd be a bittersweet deal. I'd much rather get attention being on a team that's going into a playoff run or that's fighting for the division lead.

"But I'm going to kind of do what I've always done. I'm going to go out and practice hard. I'm going to play hard. If anything like that happens, it happens. I can't control that. All I can control is how I work and trying to beat the Vikings this week."

Source: http://espn.go.com/blog/afceast/post/_/id/22540/kyle-williams-in-position-for-pro-bowl

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