Why Aneyas Williams Is Ready to Lead Notre Dame’s Backfield

Notre Dame RB coach Ja’Juan Seider did not have to hand the running back room to junior Fighting Irish back Aneyas Williams. Williams took it. With Jeremiyah Love and Jadarian Price gone to the first round of the NFL draft, Seider watched him spend the summer running film sessions and pulling the backs together on his own.

“Man, this is a natural-born leader,” Seider said last week. “He was a leader last year, and there’s sometimes like you don’t want to be the front of it because of J Love and Jadarian last year, but he always had that.”

The accountability runs both directions, which is why the room took Williams’s lead. Seider has coached closer groups over longer stretches, but not many that got there this fast, and he thinks the departures are why.

“They know it’s coming from the right place if he can hold them accountable because they can also hold him accountable,” he said. “And I just think we’re really close. This room is as close as I’ve been around in a short time. That these guys have gotten super close because they feel it, right? There’s an expectation. We lost two first-round draft picks.”

Williams did not treat that as a burden.

“But as far as being a leader, you got to love the pressure, and I love it,” he said. “I think it’s allowing me to hold myself to a higher, just a higher spot because I know they’re following in my footsteps.”

Sophomore running back Nolan James Jr., who is competing for carries in the same room, put the shift in plain terms. “I mean last year I think JD [Jadarian Price] took the brunt of that role, and I think Aneyas has stepped up,” James said. “I’m doing my part, but again, Aneyas has been here the longest. He’s probably a little bit more vocal than I am.”

Why Seider Trusts Williams

Seider kept landing on the same word when he describes how Williams runs.

“Decisive. I think that’s the biggest word. Like decisive, confidence, and he has a know-how of what’s going on around,” Seider said. “He knows the big picture. He’s very similar to what CJ (Carr) is at quarterback. He can see rotations of safety. He can see fronts changing.”

Williams carried 24 times for 224 yards and five touchdowns in 2025 while Love ran for 1,372 and Price for 674. Carries were tough to come by with two stud backs ahead of him, but by the end of the season, Williams earned more carries.

“Aneyas is a guy who played a lot towards the end of his freshman year, didn’t play as much early last year, and as the season went along, he gradually got back to the field because he started preparing like a starter again,” Seider explain. “He took the backup mentality like, listen, I’m going to push JD, I’m gonna push J Love. As I’m pushing them, I’m getting myself better, which allowed him to play the way he did down the road in Stanford.”

The Stanford game Seider referenced Williams biggest game of the year by far – 83 rushing yards and two scores on 10 carries, plus two catches for 40 yards.

Williams showed the most promise in Notre Dame’s 2024 playoff run. In the semifinal against Penn State at the Orange Bowl on Jan. 10, with Notre Dame needing a spark, Williams put up 83 yards from scrimmage on seven touches. Five of those touches were catches, good for 66 yards with a long of 36. The other two were carries for 17. With Love still limited with a knee injury, Notre Dame leaned on Williams more than they had in the regular season and he delivered in a big way.

The work since has been about the cuts. “He was a little bit stiff on some of his cuts,” Seider said. “We really, we worked really hard in the spring and summer on a lot of jump-cut moving and sinking his hips and being more vertical on our cuts.”

From Change-of-Pace to Lead Back

Williams is in his second year with Seider, and he framed that as the thing that has changed most about how he plays.

“He knows me better now, and I know him better,” Williams said. “I know what he wants to see and I know what, you know, what he wants out of the runs and the pass plays and really just all-around field efforts and things like that.”

He was specific about where the standard came from. Love, he said, “finished every single run like it was, like maybe he got tackled in the backfield, but he’s going to finish every run and work his moves.”

Now Williams is the one being watched. Kedren Young ran 21 times for 116 yards and a touchdown in 2024 before an injury cost him last season. Behind him are James and freshmen Jonaz Walton and Javian Osborne. Walton, a four-star out of Carrollton, Ga., arrived as the No. 118 player nationally and the No. 11 running back in his class, and Seider said he has already put himself in position to play.

“I want them to see the player that I can be and have been, you know, since I’ve been here,” Williams said. “I might have taken a backseat, but I learned a lot in those years.”

The Next Step Starts at Lambeau

The season opener at Lambeau Field against Wisconsin is where Williams takes his first carries as the lead back, with Young, James, Walton, and Osborne behind him and the jump cuts and hip sink Seider drilled all spring and summer getting live contact for the first time when the pads come on this month.