Vikings comments on Williams

Former Bengals safety Madieu Williams, who signed Friday night with the Vikings, met the media today. Here are comments by Minnesota head coach Brad Children and defensive coordinator Leslie Frazier.

Childress: "I’ll take a couple of questions after I introduce Madieu Williams to you, coming to us from the Cincinnati Bengals out of the University of Maryland. (He was) a former teammate of E.J.’s (Henderson). Once again, a quality, quality person. He’ll talk to you a little bit about it, but one of the things that was a prerequisite after getting the contract done is that he wants, before he gets out of town, to be able to get over to the Children’s Hospital and spend some time over there with those guys. He’s probably as good a football player as he is a person. He has an interesting story, which I know you guys will kind of get into as his career develops here. We’re very excited about having him aboard as a safety. He came into this league as a corner, has coverage skills, but as I mentioned he’s an extremely good person, which is what we’re all about here."

Frazier: "When we were going through our tapes and just putting together our lists and when Rick (Spielman) gave me the list of players that would potentially be free agents, I said, `Well they will probably franchise (Madieu) or Justin (Smith) and we probably won’t get a chance to talk to him.' Once we found out he was going to be on the market and things would change in our secondary, it was a no-brainer for me just because of my familiarity with him and just understanding what he would bring to the table. I did turn to Coach (Childress) and say, `This guy would really help us.'"