Alpha dog Williams gives Saints bark

NEW ORLEANS – It doesn't take long to realize that Gregg Williams, the New Orleans Saints' defensive coordinator, knows what he's talking about.

And if you don't realize it quickly, don't worry, he'll be glad to tell you.

"No, I've never been real bashful about letting people know what I think and that I have a pretty good idea what I'm talking about," said Williams, who has spent a career becoming one of the most inventive defensive coordinators and a guy who often rubs co-workers the wrong way.

Williams at team practice.
(Bill Haber/AP Photo)

Williams is chuckling lightly at himself and his voice is hoarse from practice, a testament that he isn't some detached genius. He throws himself into his work, literally. Williams usually stands off by himself in practice, yelling as the play unfolds, then sprinting in short spurts as the ball moves around the field and the players flow to it.

"Gregg is a little out there for most coaches," Saints defensive end Will Smith(notes) said, his eyebrows arching to underscore his understatement. "I don't think there's any one story I could give you about him because there are so many. Every day in practice, in meetings, it's all go. It's all energy."

Fellow defensive lineman Anthony Hargrove(notes) seconded the notion that Williams is a frenetic ball of energy and intellect, as if he consumed a liquid breakfast of energy drinks.

"He's crazy, always talking, telling you something, non-stop," said Hargrove, who isn't far removed from that himself. "Yeah, he had to tell me one day to just stop talking because me and him, it just never stopped. He said we couldn't get nothing done if one of us didn't shut up."

It is just that way for Williams. At least six days a week, that is.

On game day, when most players and coaches are bouncing off the wall without the help of caffeine, Williams is like a mountain lake at dawn, so calm that it reflects the surrounding peaks like a mirror.

That's the time when Williams' beautiful mind takes over, figuring out what type of blitz works best in what moment or whether to play coverage. Unlike so many coaches, Williams is not a one-trick pony, married to a certain style. He is neither blitz-happy nor conservative with coverage-only schemes.

"He's one of the few coaches you'll run into who does what fits the overall team," said Saints coach Sean Payton, who gave up a portion of his salary to get Williams on the staff this season. It was the best investment Payton has made in years as his top-seeded team faces the Arizona Cardinals in the second round of the NFC playoffs.

"He's not just blitzing to blitz, he's calling a defense with purpose," Payton said. "You saw that in Washington. When we faced him, he had guys like Sean Taylor(notes), Carlos Rogers(notes) and Fred Smoot(notes). He was running coverage schemes because that's what his talent dictated. He's coaching to what the players can do, not what he thinks they should do."

At the same time, Williams is best-suited when he is working with a staff of people with similar confidence. He made his greatest strides early in his career with Tennessee Titans coach Jeff Fisher, a man completely unafraid to cultivate ideas.

Williams congratulates safety Darren Sharper following his interception against the Patriots.
(John David Mercer/US Presswire)

After a three-year stint as head coach of the Buffalo Bills ended following the '03 season, Williams went to Washington as defensive coordinator under Joe Gibbs. There is a fascinating story about how when Gibbs returned to the NFL after 12 years away, one of the first things he did was sit down with Williams to go over the assorted blitzes that had become popular around during his absence.

Williams drew up an array of blitzes to attack Gibbs' multiple-formation offense. They were coming at Gibbs so fast and so furious that he eventually had to stop the session. It took the Hall of Fame coach three days to devise the answers to everything Williams had drawn up.

There was a belief that when Gibbs stepped down following the '07 season, Williams would be the next coach. That didn't materialize as Williams wore out his welcome with some of the higher-ups and was subsequently fired.

"There were some people in the front office who were scared of Gregg," a fellow former Redskins coach said. "He doesn't pull punches and he was going to let people know when they're BS-ing at their job."

Williams ran into a similar situation in 2008, when he landed on the staff with Jacksonville and head coach Jack Del Rio. Williams and Del Rio butted heads quickly even though Del Rio hired him. By a month into the season, Del Rio, a former defensive coach himself, took back the play-calling for the defense,

"Gregg and Jack both have big egos," a Jacksonville source said. "Neither one of them was going to back away and Jack didn't like that."

Said another coach who is friends with Williams: "You have to be able to let Gregg be Gregg and that's hard because he can take over a meeting or a practice … he'll intimidate your staff because he's so smart and a lot of people will resent him for it, but that's not really who he is. He wants to work within the structure of the team; he just wants everyone working as hard as he does.

"When he was the head coach in Buffalo, it didn't work because he tried to run everything. The guys around him didn't push back enough and so Gregg just ended up doing it all."

With Payton, Williams has the benefit of working with a guy who is just as bright as he is, yet self-confident enough to allow Williams to run his side of the ball.

"To me, it has worked great," Payton said. "It's not even a question. He knows what I want. I know what he wants."