Intensity trademark of Jets’ Williams
New York’s defensive coordinator demands mental toughness from his players
FLORHAM PARK, N.J. >> Gregg Williams has been described in many ways during his 30-year NFL coaching career — several flattering, and others not exactly appropriate for young ears.
But there’s one adjective used by most anyone you ask, love him or hate him. Intense. That’s how Williams goes about his business, and the New York Jets defensive coordinator expects his players to do the same.
“When we have to worry about the intensity of the players, we have the wrong players,” Williams said Tuesday. “When we have to worry about the competition and the lack of competition in practice or games, we have the wrong people — coaches and players.”
Decked out in his dark Jets shirt and pants in the scorching summer heat, Williams is the Jets’ man in black.
It’s visually fitting for a guy known for devising aggressive defenses — and for being at the
center of the New Orleans Saints’ Bountygate scandal seven years ago for which he was suspended a season.
He’s the defensive mad professor to head coach Adam Gase’s matching persona on offense.
“I told him the first time I met him: ‘You’re a pain in the ass to game plan for, so it’s nice to have you in the same locker room and meeting room as me,’” Jets offensive line coach Frank Pollack said with a big grin.
Williams is an intimidating presence with his menacing scowls, incessant shouting on the field and tendency to call out players right in front of teammates.
The 61-year-old coach certainly knows how to make his point.
“Well, it’s been that way my whole life, and it’s say what I mean, and mean what I say,” he said. “You can’t B.S. players . ... The thing that is easily convinced when you go to a new place is find the best guy there and make him do it. And, everybody else says, ‘Uh oh.’ Yep, uh oh. Mom and Dad didn’t make you do that stuff. Mom and Dad couldn’t play, either.”
Williams wants mentally tough players because of the pounding the game takes every week — physically and mentally.
That’s why he insists on having them run after every loose ball, even if it’s clear it’s an incomplete pass. That’s why he’ll get on even the most experienced
of guys when they drop a sure-thing interception or miss an assignment. He’s big on “caused penalties,” whether it be a false start or a holding call drawn by the defense, and other plays that don’t appear on normal postgame stats sheets such as caused sacks and interceptions.
“Otherwise, I tease them all the time,” Williams said, “I could just throw a highway cone out there and let that guy get in the way.”
No matter what it is, Williams wants winners.
“There has been a smile on my face since I walked in here,” said Williams, who spent the past two years in Cleveland. “These young men want to compete, whether it’s an argument, whether they’re playing chess or checkers in the room, anything. They want to compete, and they want to know that I’m there to pull them back if they go too far. That’s what I’m supposed to be doing.
“But, if they won’t do that, we’ve got the wrong people, OK? And, you can’t win at this level without that kind of competition.”
Williams has his work cut out for him at one position in particular: cornerback. Top starter Trumaine Johnson is “week to week” with a hamstring injury, the same thing ailing Kyron Brown, an undrafted rookie who was having a solid summer. Derrick Jones and Jeremy Clark have already been cut, and the starters at the moment are Darryl Roberts, mostly a career backup, and Arthur Maulet, who couldn’t stick with Indianapolis or New Orleans the past two years.