The last time Dexter Williams played a game at Memorial Stadium, he left the field on a cart and went to the hospital.
That was the final game of the 2022 campaign, when up to that point Williams looked like he could be in the early stages of a lengthy run as the Indiana quarterback.
As it turned out, Williams would never play again in Bloomington. That is, until this Saturday, when the IU graduate leads Kennesaw State’s offense on the field as the Owls starting quarterback.
“I’m trying to [keep it] just business as usual,” Williams told the Kennesaw State student newspaper this week. “Of course, I got people calling me and things like that from up there and even some people from down here that are telling me how excited they are to see the game. But I’m just trying to approach it like I would any other game. Obviously, it’s special because I graduated from [Indiana], spent four years there, kind of grew up there – it kind of made me into the person I am today.”
Williams didn’t play at all as a true freshman on Indiana’s memorable 2020 team. He almost had his number called that year at Wisconsin, when it appeared IU backup Jack Tuttle might not be able to return with the Hoosiers leading in the second half and on the verge of their first win in Madison in 19 years.
But Tuttle gutted it out, and then Williams tore his ACL in 2021 spring practice and missed that entire year. It didn’t look like Williams would play much for IU in 2022, but the struggling Hoosiers benched Connor Bazelak and Tuttle was injured, creating an opportunity for the Georgia native.
Williams appeared in four games with two starts in 2022 for IU. He finished 13-of-38 passing with two touchdowns, and added 165 rushing yards and one score on the ground.
He led the Hoosiers to an improbable road win at Michigan State in the penultimate game of the 2022 season, snapping a seven-game losing streak. And Williams had the Hoosiers up against Purdue in the first quarter — before he collapsed on the field after suffering a major knee injury.
Williams missed the entire 2023 season at IU with the injury, and he entered the transfer portal just before Curt Cignetti was hired. He played as a backup at Georgia Southern in 2024, and transferred to Kennesaw State ahead of this season. Williams won the starting job after a fall camp competition.
And now Williams comes full circle, after nearly leading the Owls to an upset win at Wake Forest last weekend.
“He’s a good athlete, he’s elusive, and they have designed quarterback runs,” Cignetti said of Williams on his radio show Thursday evening in Bloomington. “He’s got a strong arm. Now they were 12 for 33 passing the ball against Wake Forest, so there were some misses in there. But he can definitely be a nuisance.”
Here are highlights of Williams’ most memorable game as a Hoosier, at East Lansing in Nov. 2022:
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