The league took away the horse collar, not the hard hit. I loved Roy his first several years, but it actually got frustrating watching Williams by the time the horse collar rule was enacted because he was relying more and more on that to make tackles when he should have been wrapping up the man with the ball. Same with the big hits. Too often he would hit people and knock them back a couple of yards, but because he didn’t wrap up they would regain their balance and start running again. In any case, whether a rule is right or wrong a player has to find a way to be effective within the rules.
In 2005, when the league enacted the horse collar rule, it also limited the hits that Williams liked to deliver. His game was built around charging full speed and blowing up receivers. When the league forced him to break down and make tackles or chase down a receiver and wrap him up he couldn't do that.
This was the 2005 rule change: Unnecessarily running, diving into or throwing the body against a player who should not have reasonably anticipated such contact by an opponent is unnecessary roughness. Previously, the rule only protected a player who is out of the play.
Williams was a Pro Bowl-caliber safety for years because those big hits mainly worked, intimidating receivers and blowing up plays. When the league took those away from him, he was just a safety who was too slow to play coverage or chase down plays and make clean tackles. One reason he relied on the horse collar is because it helped him to get enough of the player to get him to the ground since he couldn't close enough ground to wrap him up.
You seem to be the remembering only the bad about Williams instead of what made him really good for a period of time that was shortened by the rule changes. He didn't come into the league as coverage-type safety like Ed Reed, he came in as an intimidator a few short years before the league started moving away from that.
I don't blame the league for moving on from some of those tackles/hits that were being allowed back then, but in doing that, it took away what made Williams good.
