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Following in the footsteps of your parents can be a hard thing to do.  It can be even harder when one of your parents is a former All-Pro in the National Football League.
 
For Eastern Illinois defensive back Mark Williams, that pressure has never really been placed on him, even as he enters his fifth season playing for the Panthers.
 
"My dad didn't pressure us to play football and I didn't start playing football until my seventh grade year.  I loved basketball.  I was a 'hooper'," said Williams.  "But certain things worked out, and I just started playing football and fell in love with the game.  Now I see why my dad did it."
 
Williams father is Darryl Williams a former All-American at the University of Miami, that went on to a ten-year career in the NFL after being selected in the first round of the 1992 NFL Draft.  
 
Growing up with a father that played at "The U", provided Williams with access to some well-known names in that program's history.
 
"Guys like Darrell Fullington and Cortez Kennedy were around the house.  I played with Michael Irvin's son and one of our assistant coaches was Cris Carter (a Miami native), so I met a lot of those players.  It was a great opportunity."
 
While having access to that caliber of players helped shape Williams football mind.  He was born late in his father's professional career and never really got to see him play in person.
 
"My memories of him as a player are from looking at film after the fact.  I was born during the last couple of years of him playing in the league, so it's all a blur.  It's cool hearing people talk about my dad as a player and what they saw him do on the field."
 
The older Williams made a name for himself as a safety in the NFL, finishing his career with more than 600 tackles.  It would only be natural for people to slot the younger Williams into the same position on the field.
 
"Naturally I was a safety when I started playing football in seventh grade.  My first game starting, I caught an interception and ran it back for a touchdown; I was able to do the same at the start of my college career."
 
He eventually moved to his current position of corner and indeed started to step out of his father's shadow at EIU.  Williams intercepted a pass in his first career game for the Panthers, returning it 73 yards for a touchdown at Indiana State.  He has since picked off at least one pass in each of the following years, and enters his senior season ranked ninth on the EIU career pass break-ups list.  For Williams, part of that success came with a maturity after redshirting his first season in Charleston.
 
"Coming into college I had that young mindset of, 'I wanted to play right now'.  Looking back at it, redshirting was one of the best things to happen to me.  It gave me a chance to use to the speed of the college game and learn to play from the older guys.  It also gave me more time to learn our defensive playbook."
 
Williams collected Freshman All-American honors in 2017 and was a candidate for the Jerry Rice Award, which is presented to the top FCS Freshman in the nation.  However after two seasons in one system, he had to make a change as the Panthers brought in a new coaching staff.  Now he had to focus on learning once again.
 
"Basically you forget what you learned already when there is a coaching change, and pick up the new system as a new player.  New coaches bring in their own system and own style, so you have to adjust to every coach you have."
 
As a junior, Williams did make adjustments as he started ten games during the season, finishing the year with 35 tackles and seven pass break-ups.  With the position he plays, Williams feels that he is making adjustments on almost every play and has to approach the corner position in that manner.
 
"You've got to have that swag to you; that 'IT' factor.  You've got to embrace the position.  It's gonna suck sometimes, but you've got to embrace it.  You're not going to win everyone, but you try to adjust and win more than you're going to lose."
 
As the Panthers enter the fall semester with football, now set to be played in the spring, Williams thinks that it may be a blessing for a team to have youth.  As COVID-19 shut down campus in the spring, he returned to Miami and stayed active with running and weights, but realizes this team has a good number of new players.
 
"We are working on the chemistry between the guys.  Moving the season to the spring gives us a chance to have the younger guys learn the playbook and get use to the college game.  It gets them ready to play because some of them are going to have to step up and play.  We are creating that bond."
 
A bond and chemistry is something that his father knows all too well.  Darryl Williams was a member of two National Championship teams, playing for coaches Jimmy Johnson and Dennis Erickson on the Hurricanes.  That bond and the success that emerged from it, have been well documented in a couple of films on ESPN. 
 
"His teams were featured in some of those ESPN films.  He wasn't interviewed but we watched them, and he told me and my brother about some of those old times.  It was good to hear him talk about those memories and good times he had playing college football."
 
When the Panthers are able to return to the field for Williams final season at the college level, he is hopeful that is not his final chance to lace up the cleats.
 
"Of course I want to play at the next level, I want to play as long as I can.  I'm putting it in God's hands.  I'm trying to get to the league just like every other kid.  For now, I'm focused on working hard and making sure that opportunity may be there."
 
If that opportunity does happen to present itself to Williams, surprisingly his favorite team is not his hometown Miami Dolphins or one of the teams his father suited for over his ten year career.
 
"I'm on outcast.  I'm a (New England) Patriots fan, and have been since I was little.  However, the (Cincinnati) Bengals and (Seattle) Seahawks will always have love from me because my dad played with them."