Rams learning the Williams way on defense/PD

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RamBill

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Rams learning the Williams way on defense
By Jim Thomas

http://www.stltoday.com/sports/foot...cle_77964330-6055-527a-8293-72d2580ae5ed.html

First impressions of Rams defensive coordinator Gregg Williams? These words come to mind: Serious. Full-speed ahead. High-energy. Non-stop. Full-throttle. Passionate. Vocal. Loves his job.

Does the guy ever relax?

“I relax being around my kids, being around these (players) off the field,” Williams said. “I try to hunt and fish when possible. Now is not a time for relaxing.”

Not even in mid-June at the end of OTAs, with training camp nearly five weeks away and the start of the regular season nearly three months away. In short, Williams has spent a lot of time in his office this spring.

“I’ve been working Saturdays and Sundays. I’ve been working late at night just because there’s a lot to get caught up on, and the (defensive) buck stops with me,” Williams said. “Jeff (Fisher)’s brought me back to do those things.”

In short to turn a decent to pretty good defense into a great one.

“When I first got here there were 101 projects, and they said there’s no way we could get done with that before training camp,” Williams said.

Yes, he said 101 projects.

“We’re already done,” Williams said. “We’ve already got those things done, and we’ve been covering all those things, and they’ve learned a bunch from there. It’s a fun time.”

Fun? Says who?

“There’s a method to his madness,” says linebacker James Laurinaitis.

Laurinaitis then paused and added with a laugh, “Regardless, it’s still madness.”

But seriously. ...

“You can tell this is his wheelhouse,” Laurinaitis said. “He doesn’t care about anything else. He’s a football coach and he’s a dang good one.”

Williams’ passion for the game is obvious, and as the Rams’ new coordinator gets to know his players — and vice versa — the early returns have been favorable.

“In this game of football, what you put in you get out of it,” rookie defensive back Lamarcus Joyner said. “Players invest in that. We’ve bought the pitch that he’s selling. I love him as a person. He’s straightforward. He’s genuine. He’s wholehearted.”

And he never seems to shut up on the field.

“Somebody has to bring the intensity,” Joyner said, laughing. “We need a guy like that.”

Williams doesn’t seem to miss much, and as much as he’ll praise a good play, he’ll also get on a player who messes up — and it doesn’t matter if that player is an undrafted third-team rookie, or one of the team’s defensive stalwarts. That makes it hard to take a play off.

“I love it personally because it eliminates the margin for error,” Joyner said. “You need someone that’s gonna help you chase perfection knowing that it may never be caught. But in the process excellence will be achieved, and he says that all the time. You need people like that in the driver’s seat.”

One of the hallmarks of the spring OTA practice sessions has been pursuit drills that feature up-downs. It begins with four or five defensive players at a time doing up-down drills, something not usually seen at the NFL level.

Jogging in place, they flop to the ground. Then they pop up to their feet and sprint after several footballs, spaced a few yards apart on the ground near the sideline.

But here’s the catch: There’s only three footballs to go around for those four or five players. The players that don’t come away with a football? Their reward is more up-downs, which is a pretty strong incentive to come away with a football next time.

On the first day of training camp, Williams has told the defense to be ready for 40 up-downs followed by a “team” or 11-on-11 period. The idea, Laurinaitis said, is to simulate: “Hey, can these guys think through their assignments when they’re dead tired, because that’s the most stressed you’re gonna be on the field.”

Can they go through their checks and make proper reads when playing Seattle, and it’s the fourth quarter, and they need a stop to end a long drive?

Williams does a lot of things on the practice field to stress his defense. He calls it organized chaos.

“We constantly are throwing things out at them that we don’t even talk about in the meetings because we want to see them battle through stress,” Williams said. “Everybody can calm themselves through relaxed states of mind and relaxed walk-throughs and stuff. You have time to second-guess things, you have time to get back on the same page.

“But you can’t fake who you are under stress, and that’s what the games are. In the National Football League on Sundays and Monday nights and Thursday nights, you’re under stress.”

He simulates that stress in the practice environment to keep players thinking, executing, and communicating with each other.

“All good defenses have great vocal, loud, talking communication,” Williams said. “It’s amazing from Practice 1 (of OTAs) now up here to Practice 8 how far we’ve come with that. We still have light years to go, and you don’t get that until you get through the training camp and start getting into the preseason games.”

And you don’t know for sure until the real games begin and you’re involved in a close, physical, exhausting contest in the fourth quarter.

As much as you can learn from watching film, it’s still different once you hit the practice field and you’re watching players perform from just a few yards away. Williams is all about maximizing the strengths of his personnel, and it’s hard to fully understand or even see those strengths until you’re with a player on the field.

“Everybody’s got weaknesses — you, me, them, all of us do — and everybody has strengths,” Williams said. “So that’s why we play so many packages of people. We’re gonna package to situations, package to personnel that the other team is bringing on the field, and then package to our strengths.”

As Laurinaitis said: “There’s a ton of packages, it might be 30-something in all. And it’s just stuff that I’ve never been a part of before.”

So let the fun — and the madness — begin.
 

So Ram

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Nick Wag's report on same article is an A+ vs Jim T's Avg. work.Love how the coaches over the years have responded to him.Real funny when Fisher mocks him.