Cleveland Browns defensive coordinator Gregg Williams, the Bountygate coach, promises to make his team play harder, faster, meaner.
CLEVELAND, Ohio - "You want to coach? Come and get some."
Gregg Williams, the Cleveland Browns new defensive coordinator, said that to the media Thursday, when discussing the pressures of his job.
Then he pointed out the slouchy posture in the media ranks as his self-acclaimed excellent peripheral vision took in a roomful of Oscar, the slouches.
"Pay us like players, and we'll sit like players," muttered one colleague.
2012 suspension
Among the things we are not allowed to come and get, however, are Williams' comments about the vicious Bountygate scandal in New Orleans.
The closest he came to introspection and not exhortation was when he said, "We can all evaluate (ourselves) in good times, but in bad times, tough times? 2012 (his suspended season for the scandal)? Who was I? What did I do?"
Bells were ringing
Williams has certainly retained his considerable appetite for the big hit. He remembers when the grass was real, men were men, and concussions meant someone "got his bell rung."
The Browns will be no slouches, not under the direction of the self-described "competition-a-holic," whose Saints rang opponents' bells the way Quasimodo did when swinging on the ropes at Notre Dame Cathedral.
"From practice to meetings to games, I love to compete," said Williams. "We've got to stir the emotions, stir the culture, on being more competitive."
Although Williams said he has "42 packages" of defensive alignments, which might stress Santa if they were lugged down one chimney, the emphasis will be on simpler stuff, such as the predatory stalking, trapping and mauling of ball-carriers.
"Find ball, see ball, get ball," he said, which is sort of like the football field as the Serengeti plain.
Populate the ball
"We will populate the ball," Williams said, meaning pursue it. "If you aren't around the ball, you will probably be moving into the broadcast booth, or the beer vendors, or helping hold the (first-down) sticks on the sideline.
Shaking things up
Another jovial term for head trauma was to say that the injured player, like a James Bond martini, was "shaken up."
The brain quakes Williams' Saints created could crumble a player's senses the way a rocking and shuddering fault line buckles the ground.
"Some of these millennials have been enabled all their lives," said Williams, who then addressed his plans for his new Browns' pupils.
Harder, faster, meaner
"They'll never play for anybody that's going to let them be more attacking, more physical than me," Williams said. "I've got to get you to play harder, faster, meaner. Defending every blade of grass, not every yard on the field."
Addressing those entitled millennials, Williams said, "Don't be offended at the way I coach (a player). If he gets in the door at this level. I've got to butt their heads up against the cap of what mommy and daddy's genes say they can and can't do."
Dawg Pound days
He channeled his days of coming here as an assistant to the Houston Oilers' Jerry Glanville, a coach known for encouraging chippy play.
Williams loves the Dawg Pound and wants to be on their side. His memories from the Glanville years include dodging hurled C- and D-batteries, beer bottles and beer cans. That was in a different time and a different stadium, with a different fan base fired by a different fervor.
What he was pelted with as an Oilers' aide wasn't as tough as the rain of criticism that he got for trafficking in targeting and making commerce out of carnage.
Williams has never lacked for self-esteem, but he has to have changed some, he has to have moderated a bit, or he wouldn't be back in coaching.
Teams that come and get some of what he's got in store for them will find the change is in degree, not in kind.
