Ex-Giant Leonard Williams returns from injury loving Seattle’s fans. The Seahawks love him

Leonard Williams spent nearly a decade playing for both of New York’s NFL teams.

That was until the Giants traded him to the Seahawks in the middle of last season.

Now that the one-time Pro Bowl defensive end is about to play his 14th game with his new team, what’s the difference he feels playing in Seattle versus New York?

“I might get a lot of hate for this, but in the end of the day, it’s true, and I think it’s known at this point. But it’s just the fan base out here is just amazing,” Williams said at his locker Friday, two days before he and his first-place Seahawks (3-1) play his former Giants (1-3) at Lumen Field Sunday (1:25 p.m., channel 7).

“You know, they’re there for all four quarters cheering you on. It’s just the atmosphere is incredible,” Williams, 30, said.

“It’s super loud...it’s electric, and it’s fun to play in (Lumen Field), especially as a defensive guy, because that’s when the crowd gets loud (when the opponent’s offense is on the field). Sometimes you can’t even hear the guy right next to you. I think that’s the biggest difference.”

Those Jets (2015-19) and Giants (2019-23) teams he played on with home games in the New Jersey Meadowlands across the Hudson River from Manhattan weren’t exactly worthy of packed stadiums with stay-till-the-end crowds. Williams played in just two playoff games over those 8 1/2 seasons with New York’s teams. Those were both in January 2023, with the Giants.

Sunday Williams will be playing against his old friends for the first time while returning from injured ribs he got in Seattle’s last home game. That was the team’s win two weeks ago over Miami . He will be starting on the defensive line playing in front of the Seahawks’ 174th consecutive sell out of their 68,000-seat stadium in SoDo.

He still has good friends on the Giants, especially on the side of the ball that has remained largely intact from the unit he played the first eight games with last season.

“I’m still excited to play play those guys. I still know a lot of those guys on defense,” he said. “So, I’m obviously excited to go out there and play this week at our home, against my rival, against my old team. And, you know, obviously want to make some plays and show out against those guys.”

Yet he’s trying to treat Sunday like the other 145 games he’s played in his NFL career.

“I‘m honestly trying to treat it like every other game,” Williams said. “I think it would not be good of me to, like, get too high or too low for any specific week. So I’m trying to treat it just like every other opponent. Prepare the same way.

“And, then, they also only have two O-linemen that I remember from the time I was there. So that’s another reason why I’ve got to study the same way.”

What the Seahawks traded for

This time last year Seattle’s defensive front was struggling. The thinnest spot on the team was its defensive line. The Seahawks didn’t fortify it much in the 2023 draft. They drafted fourth-round pick Cameron Young to be a reinforcement at nose tackle. He was on his way to playing just 18% of defensive snaps.

They had just allowed Arizona 127 yards rushing and Cleveland 155. They were about to lose stalwart outside linebacker Uchenna Nwosu for the season to a torn pectoral. They were on their way to being the 30th-ranked defense in the NFL, and 31st against the run.

The Seahawks needed a jolt up front.

General manager John Schneider traded a second-round pick in this year’s draft and a second-round choice in 2025 to acquire the Giants’ $63 million defensive lineman who excels at end. And at tackle outside the guard. And at nose tackle, over the center.

At the time of the trade in October 2023, then-Seahawks coach Pete Carroll called Williams “a special player.”

When the Jets, the team that had drafted him in the first round in 2015 out of USC, traded him to the Giants halfway into the 2019 season, he was shocked. He was 25. he thought a team that used the sixth-overall pick in a draft would never trade him.

When the Giants traded him two years after signing him to that $63 million deal, to Seattle, he shrugged.

“It was the second time I’ve been traded, and I was older,” he said Friday.

“So I think it was I handled it like a professional. I was traded before, from the Jets to the Giants, and I think when that happened I was still kind of in like a college mindset where I was like, ‘I’m a die-hard-Jet’ type of mindset. So when the trade happened, I was a little more devastated.

“When the second trade happened. I just was like, you know, this is part of the business.”

Williams’ injury the last two weeks has exposed Seattle’s defensive front as thin again. Second-year man Mike Morris and former practice-squad end Myles Adams have played more. Adams has played his first snaps of the season. He played 20 of them where Williams often would have in Detroit Monday night .

What have the Seahawks missed without Williams the last two games?

Love.

“How do you not love Leo Williams?” Seahawks coach and defensive architect Mike Macdonald said. “The guy can do all the things. We have guys that can do his skill set. It’s just what he does is really elite. The guy’s a great player.”

The rookie head coach and his staff of 21 new assistant coaches also love Williams’ experience and quiet leadership.

“He’s come a long way,” Macdonald said. “It’s not that he wasn’t a big-time leader, but this guy is someone that we lean on as a coaching staff. And the players look to him.

“He’s not the most wordy guy of all time, or verbose. But, when he does have something to say, people listen because it’s real. And he brings it every day.

“We love him.”

Leonard Williams, Uchenna Nwosu. Finally.

Because of his ribs issue the last two weeks, because Nwosu has been out since Aug. 24 because of a sprained knee from the final preseason game, Sunday is going to be the first time the Seahawks will have what they traded for.

Their second game in six days, against the Giants, will be the first time the Seahawks will have Williams playing in front of Nwosu on the defense’s edge.

That alone could improve Seattle’s defense that allowed quarterback Jared Goff 18 for 18 passing and the Lions 42 points Monday night. The defense ruined the 516 yards the Seahawks gained on offense on quarterback Geno Smith’s career night (38 for 56, 395 yards passing) in the 42-29 loss, Seattle’s only defeat so far this season.

“I’m super excited to play with him,” Williams said of Nwosu.

“(Training) camp was really our only time we had experience playing with each other. And, you know, he’s a great player. He communicates well. And when I’m on his side, I just feel like we do well together. So I’m excited for him to come back fully.”