I think this fan base is misremembering things, so let me provide clarification:
Emory committed prior to Rashada. In fact, when Williams committed, this board wondered if would land Rashada. It was reported Emory was going to be QB1 in the class, that’s how much Ponce valued him.
See here 
[EMBED content="post-5882945"]https://www.canesinsight.com/threads/emory-williams-2023-qb-commit.177610/post-5882945[/EMBED]
Matter of fact, go ahead & refresh ur memory in that thread b/c what’s happening is a lot of revisionist history & 20/20 hindsight takes. When Rashada de-committed, this staff was comfortable w/ Williams. One of the reasons I stopped listening to Pate was b/c of this take about Williams. It was at this point, I knew he nothing more than mainstream media, so taking what he said would be w/ a grain of salt like Stephen A Smith:
[MEDIA=youtube]ALdzzol8CqI[/MEDIA]
Then we had this graphic put up by CaneSport shared here.
[ATTACH=full]322359[/ATTACH]
So yeah, that’s what happened. Emory committed 1st, was told he would be the only QB. Rashada committed about a week later. Some on this board were concerned Williams would de-commit & go to a school like Auburn. Some ?’d, ratings be damned, if he was better than Rashada b/c of what happened at the Elite-11. Then after Rashada decommitted, the “real leader”, “just an it factor”, “seems a bit more athletic than I thought” etc. etc. etc. started coming out on this very board about Williams. This was further perpetuated by the EE practice reports.
Let’s also remember that Mario had a sit down, healthy dinner w the family to lock him in. So this wasn’t some “ah shucks” offer. Williams was evaluated, pursued, & made us feel like he was good enough on his own merit.