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New Orleans Saints Defensive Coordinator Gregg Williams Media Availability Transcript

Written by Justin Macione (New Orleans Saints) | Friday, 04 December 2009 16:59 | Saints News



New Orleans Saints Defensive Coordinator Gregg Williams

Friday, December 4, 2009


Q: Can you talk about going against your former team?


A: I think when you stay in it as long as I have; you’re going to cross paths with lots of different people, lots of different places you’ve been at. I have a beautiful home, my favorite home that I’ve ever lived in still there, a son that has had a phenomenal career, my daughter graduated from high school there in town and when you go back there a lot of those players I was able to have decisions on bringing them there. My old (defensive) coaching staff is there, so there’s some very, very close friends in that organization and like I said before, Dan (Snyder) and I are still very good friends. Dan treated my family so well. He treated me well when I was there. I just had happened to coach long enough in a the league where there’s a lot of those kinds of things, going back to Tennessee, going to back to Houston, going back to places like that. When you’ve been in a long time, that’s the nature of this business.


Q: Is your home in Alexandria?


A: It’s in Leesburg. The training complex is in Ashburn. My home is 14 miles from the old training facility there and it’s still my favorite in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. It’s one of my favorite places I’ve ever been.


Q: You still have some former players on this team?


A: A lot of old players. There’s still a lot of players I was involved in drafting, involved in signing as free agents, some of my favorites of all times. London’s (Fletcher) one of the favorite guys I’ve ever had a chance to coach. He’s not supposed to be good enough or tall enough to play in this league. In fact someone said here they were trying to remember what his number was. I said I can remember what his number was. I gave him number 59 when he was with the Redskins because it matched his height. He quickly told me the last time I measured they didn’t measure the size vertically, they did it widthwise. I said, that’s right London. He’s one of my all-time favorites. There’s a lot of good guys there and quickly here, again when you’ve been in it as long as I’ve been in it, opportunity knocks. The next opportunity you have might be the best opportunity you have. I kind of think that about here. This is a great place to be. Again, I chased Drew Brees one time in wanting to draft him and didn’t get an opportunity to do that and I’m happy he’s on our sideline and not playing against him in our Monday night game when he was lights out. That’s as good as any quarterback I’ve ever seen play with the way he played this last Monday night.


Q: Your old defensive players joked to Jason Campbell that you were going to take it out on him. Is there an emotion to prove something?


A: No, there is no emotion. One of the things about coming here was, when I was asked to change the culture here, just like I was asked to change the culture there. I had to do it more radically there. It was already done here. Sean had already done a lot of the work that a new staff has to do when you go into some place and totally change culture, totally change attitude. I just had to come in and be a part of it. When I did come here though, one of the things I said was no matter whether it’s practice as you guys saw in practice how much we compete in the OTA’s and the minicamps is that when you step inside the white lines, there’s a certain way you have to compete every day and so when you step inside the white lines on gameday there’s a certain way you have to compete and regardless of whether I’ve coached there or not, there’s a certain way I have to compete. If you’re going to compete at the level of accomplishment that we want and the fact of the player can play a long time in the league through genetics and expertise is one thing, same with a coach. In order to coach a long time in this league, you have to have an expertise and you have to have a way you go about teaching your attitude and philosophy. That’s what we’re going to do. When it’s inside the white lines, we don’t look at anything with insignia, white labels on the helmets. That was a big thing this past week. We talked about that from the Patriot impact. We don’t look at what’s on the side of the helmet. We have to get out there and compete, because our matchup.


Q: Does genetics help you coach?


A: A lot of people have said that have known me and my kids, I found out it’s destiny or what, about 45 minutes before we went out to play on Monday night, I found out my son Chase was the only one there in Northern Virginia that made first-team all-metro DC. About 15 minutes later I found out he’s the Player of the Year in Loudon County. 15 minutes later I find out he’s the Player of the Year in Northern Virginia. All my friends say, it’s finally good, my wife got it right and had a good kid and it had nothing to do with me. He’s had a great year and he’s going to work the sidelines and be at the hotel the night before.


Q: What will he do on the sidelines?


A: I’ll probably have him connected with Joe Vitt, because he plays linebacker and Joe has already coached him down there a lot anyway. He’s gotten a lot from coach Vitt. Their personalities are awfully alike and he wants to hang with the linebackers during the adjustments of the game and that kind of stuff.


Q: Can he handle the language?


A: I can tell you this, that didn’t come from his mother. He’s okay with the language. There won’t be any problem with that.


Q: Will other members of your family be at the game?


A: No, my wife’s followed me around enough. She’s going to watch it on TV. She won’t go to the game. Chase will be the only one and my daughter’s in college.


Q: We read about it from the outside and how the Redskins presented it when they didn’t choose you as head coach. Was that a difficult period?


A: In all honesty, no. I will tell you this, Dan’s (Snyder) a good friend. I don’t know if you guys haven’t noticed it because I haven’t been very visible since I’ve been here; I’ve got a strong personality and he owns the team. It’s okay. We are still really good friends. He did a lot for me when I was there. I really enjoyed being around him. He’s very intelligent and very aggressive in his thinking, proactive in what he wants done. No, it really wasn’t and again, from that aspect of the next opportunity down the line for me. I wouldn’t have the chance to be here if it wasn’t that type of opportunity.


Q: At any time did they lead you to believe that you would succeed Joe Gibbs?


A: No, at no point in time did I think about those type of things and I don’t. I don’t think about that right here. If I’m asking a player to focus on the day at hand, the next game’s the most important, I got to be the same way. Good, smart players can smell a con, just like when you walked in junior high and you could smell the substitute teacher walking down the hall. The players can smell that fake coach too. I don’t ever worry about those kinds of things. I take care of the job at hand that day and I’ve been real fortunate to make a lot of money doing this. I just want to have an opportunity to compete, continue doing this until I can’t do it anymore. Now my son and this one, this one is getting ready to go to college. He’ll probably end up as a dumb ass coaches too and then I’ll probably have to stay around longer just to be with him. Both of those guys are pretty smart. Now I’m questioning their IQ, because they want to do what I do. I’ll hang around and coach with them. That’s been a lot of fun with me getting the opportunity to coach with my son here. When I was head coach of the Bills, I don’t think I was around enough. He was the Player of the Year in Western New York and there was an awful lot of time when you’re away from the things that should be most important in the world and I’m doing a lot of good catch up now with him and I’m looking forward to that with Chase if Chase goes down that line and wants to do that. My daughter’s in physical therapy. She has probably a pretty good chance of being one of the few female trainers in the league one of these days and dad continues to do right, people will listen to me and give her a chance.


Q: Can you talk about your son Chase?


A: He’s a real smart kid like his mommy, real smart. He’s graduating here the day before the Dallas Cowboy game. He’ll be down here from the Dallas Cowboys game until as long as we continue to play. He enrolls at Virginia Tech. He is early committed. Frank Beamer and Bud Foster did a great job of recruiting him. He had places all over the country he could have gone to. He’s going to go to Virginia Tech and I think his first day of school’s January 16.


Q: Will your family transition at all down here if your team makes the playoffs?


A: Yes, we’ll probably transition. We haven’t gotten that far. The home that I have up there is no tiny one. I live in the ghetto of my neighborhood, but it’s still a pretty substantial home. It will take a while to do those kinds of things. I kind of like that it’s a good central base of operations. It’s going to take a while. It’s very pricey and it’s still three and a half hours from Virginia Tech, keeping that close. My daughter loves that area too. She had a great class of kids that she was involved with. I turned down all those head coaching jobs after my second year there. I had behind the scenes four jobs, I won’t mention which four that were offered behind the scenes and I said no to those jobs because I wanted her to graduate from high school. She was in a great situation there. She did. We also wanted Chase to graduate from high school there. We looked into some situations down here and the reason that he didn’t come down here was that he was going to lose a credit from Virginia to Louisiana, somehow, someway and he couldn’t graduate early and he wanted to graduate early, so he stayed up there and he graduated early and he’s going to college in January.

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