It’s still too painful to write anything lengthy on that thing that happened the other night.
But there’s something to say about Gregg Williams—something that may indicate flip-flopping given my previous piece on how it’s not Gregg Williams’s fault. But I mean, yeah—about that.
I’ll take a step back from previous and, while I won’t disavow everything I said—Gregg Williams certainly wasn’t the only problem, as I’ve maintained since the preseason that our defensive personnel was middling at best. That’s true.
On the other hand, there have now been enough glaring examples of Williams stubbornness and Williams hubris to indicate that he has indeed been part of the problem.
Part of being a great coach is knowing how to coach great in situational football. One of the reasons Sean Payton went from being a good offensive mind to very good NFL head coach is because he learned when to set aside his own pride for the sake of the greater good. He’s a stubborn man, but not to a fault. When something is working, he sets aside his own interests (you think it was easy for a man like Sean Payton to hand over playcalling duties for the duration of the season to a coordinator who had never performed those duties before, when it seemed to be in the best interest of the team?).
Williams, on the other hand, as his own players say, lives and dies by his philosophy, no matter the situation. A part of the school of the Ryans, he shares the inadequacy that doomed the patriarch of said: Buddy Ryan, architect of the ‘85 Bears, failed as a head coach because he was hotheaded, stubborn; an arrogant loudmouth. His son Rex fails again and again as head coach of the New York Jets because he is hotheaded, stubborn; an arrogant loudmouth. Rob hasn’t had a chance to completely fail yet—but Gregg Williams, who while not a Ryan relative by blood is a Ryan disciple by professional circumstance, has been fired as a head coach and twice fired as a defensive coordinator for his own hotheaded, stubborn, arrogant, loudmouth ways.
To achieve at the highest levels, a coach can’t live and die by anything: he must adapt to the situations that present themselves during the course of a long difficult campaign for the Lombardi Trophy. Sean Payton, though he still makes mistakes (see: 63 pass attempts vs San Francisco), has shown the ability to make such adaptation (see: development of his rushing offense, willingness to fire Gary Gibbs, willingness to rely on the run in certain game situations, etc).
Gregg Williams lives and dies by his stubborn credo. He nearly killed the Saints against Atlanta in Atlanta this year, and against San Francisco, even though the game was in the end a total team failure on offense, defense, and special teams, the Saints eventually, in the end, in the final situation, died by it.
It’ll be the last time the Saints either live or die by anything Gregg Williams, and rightfully so.
