The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Williams putting his profane stamp on ‘D’
Browns defensive coordinator has been making an impression. “I’m selling football. If you don’t get people to listen to you, you’re not going to sell anything.” Plus, Jeff Schudel weighs in on the Cavs.
Gregg Williams’ approach as Browns defensive coordinator can be summed up in the title of a song by rocker Alice Cooper: “No more Mr. Nice Guy.”
Williams might try to soften his language in front of visitors to training camp this summer. But when the gates are closed to spectators, he lets his players know exactly where they stand in words that would make a felon blush.
“Let’s cut to the chase,” Williams said at the conclusion of minicamp. “I’m selling football. If you don’t get people to listen to you, you’re not going to sell anything. I think I got his attention. That’s all it is. There are lots of ways to go; pat you on the back — that hasn’t worked here, so why would we be surprised that all of a sudden we have to do something different?
“My job is to effect change. If you can’t effect change, you have to do something else. He has been extremely focused. I don’t care how I did it. You should see how hard he’s worked in the weight room. That’s his idea. That’s not my idea. That’s great.”
Williams was answering a question specifically about Browns cornerback Joe Haden. Haden, a Pro Bowl player in 2013 and 2014 is coming off two sub-par seasons. He had two concussions in 2015 and last year played with two groin injuries that required offseason surgery.
“When I first got here and I met him, I went up to his office and we talked for a while, just about my toughness,” Haden said on April 18. “The biggest thing he told me was ‘if you didn’t play through your injury, I would tell them to get you out of here.’ So he was in my face as soon as I met him.”
Haden wasn’t complaining about Williams, and Williams wouldn’t care if Haden did complain. Haden, in fact, said: “We need somebody that’s going to switch it up, change it up, tell us something, cuss us out, scream at us, let us know that we’re sorry right now and we’ve got to be better” in the same interview.
Left tackle Joe Thomas, who has never missed a snap and has made every Pro Bowl in his 10year career, always rests on Wednesdays during the season so he can be fresh for Sundays, and because Friday is usually a lighter practice the only day of the week he really has to practice hard is Thursday.
Maybe even Williams would make an exception for a player of Thomas’ status. But you get the feeling he wouldn’t.
“I really don’t care what a veteran thinks,” Williams said. “I really don’t care what a young guy thinks. I really don’t care what you (reporters) think. That’s part of the message.
“The message is I have to earn their respect. They have to earn my respect and either you know what you’re doing or you don’t know what you’re doing. It’s a tough deal. So the fact that these guys are really receptive, that’s nice. But if they weren’t, then they can go be for somebody else, I don’t care about that.”
The tough talk plays well. It plays better if it produces results.
Former Browns head coach Mike Pettine was proud of his nickname — Blunt Force Trauma — because he wouldn’t sugarcoat things for players. But after a 7-4 start in 2014, the Browns lost 18 of 21 games and he was fired.
Williams had the same approach last year as defensive coordinator of the Los Angeles Rams. The Rams finished ninth defensively (the Browns were 31st), but the Rams gave up 32 touchdown passes — only four fewer than the Browns allowed.
“Not good,” Williams admitted. “I think we played the first-most number of plays in the league or the second-most. And I thought really, in all seriousness, that we gave up a couple of plays, long plays that we typically don’t. We’ll see. The (Browns) are doing very well. The proof is in the pudding. We have to go play.”
Experts advise Cavs
Twenty-eight teams in the NBA need more than the Cavaliers need to conquer the Golden State Warriors.. But the Cavaliers are the team all the pundits want to advise, because unless something unforeseen happens, the Cavaliers and Warriors will meet for a fourth straight time in the Finals next year.
You can expect Kevin Love to be the name most often linked to trade rumors. Andrew Lynch of Fox Sports suggests three trade possibilities involving Love – ship him to Indiana for Paul George, trade him to the Knicks for Carmelo Anthony or trade him to the New Orleans Pelicans for DeMarcus Cousins.
The Cavaliers would be getting scorers with George or Anthony. How the new player in such a trade would share the ball with LeBron James and Kyrie Irving would be a conundrum for Cavaliers coach Tyronn Lue.
Acquiring Cousins would make the Cavaliers better in the paint and a better rebounding team. The pace of the game would not be as frenetic, which would benefit the Cavaliers.
Lynch has another trade proposal — ship Kyrie Irving and Edy Tavares to the Clippers for Chris Paul. His logic is Paul would give the Cavaliers a true point guard and play at a slower pace, which suits the Cavaliers.
“I don’t see a big gap,” Lue said in Oakland after the Warriors won Game 5 to take the title of champions back from the Cavaliers. “I thought we played well, got better each game, but against good teams, you can’t give away games like Game 3 at home and then expect to come here and win in a hostile environment. So when you have them beat, you have to beat them.
“You can’t go back and forth or teeter on the fence. You have to beat them. Letting Game 3 get away from us and then coming back to this gym, we knew it was going to be tough. But I thought our mindset was right. I thought we gave the right amount of fight, the right amount of physicality.”
The Cavaliers led Game 3 at Quicken Loans Arena, 113-107, with less than three minutes to play, and were outscored 11-0 the rest of the way.
The Cavaliers are in denial if they believe another seven-game series with the Warriors with the teams as they are now would produce a different winner. At minimum, the Cavaliers must get younger and better defensively off the bench. It won’t be easy considering they have no picks in the two-round NBA draft on June 22.
I didn’t know that
… Until I read my Snapple bottle cap.
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