Saints' Williams among new NFL coordinators in spotlight in 2009

Ex-Bills head coach Gregg Williams had been a defensive coordinator with the Jaguars, Redskins and Titans before joining the Saints. Icon SMI Related Links List of all coaches and coordinators for 2009 Don Banks's Mailbag Submit a comment or question to Don Banks. Name: Email: Hometown: Question: SEND Follow Don Banks on Twitter

Now on his fourth assignment as a defensive coordinator in the NFL, Gregg Williams has something at his disposal that he's never had before: A top-ranked offense with which to share a locker room. The Saints last season finished first in scoring, total yards and passing yards, making it rather obvious where the improvement must come if New Orleans is to break out of its 15-17 non-playoff funk of the past two years.

That's where Williams comes in. His task is to get a Saints defense that ranked 26th in points and 23rd in total yards last season to remotely hold up its end of the bargain. With the Saints' wealth of talent on offense, if he can coax any significant step forward out of the defense, you have to like New Orleans' chances to end its underachieving ways and return to the ranks of legitimate NFC Super Bowl contenders -- as it was during its magical post-Katrina season of 2006.

"Since I've been either a coordinator or a head coach in this league, this is the most explosive offense I've ever been around, by far,'' Williams told me Wednesday afternoon, from his office at the Saints team complex. "It's a good situation to be in. We've got a nucleus of talent on defense, and with all the injuries they had last season, I think they've played much better defense here than most people give them credit for. But I think we've got a chance to be even better than that.''

Entering his fourth season as the Saints' head coach, Sean Payton hired Williams to replace his friend and former defensive coordinator, Gary Gibbs, in January because he knows the time to win is now. Though Payton and Williams have never worked together, and knew each other only through competing against one another within the league, Payton coveted Williams for his reputation of instilling his defenses with a sense of intensity and aggressiveness, and being able to generate consistent pass rush in a variety of ways. The Saints' Achilles heel the past two seasons has been a lack of pressure on the passer, which has led to repeated big-play breakdowns in pass coverage.

"I just thought we needed a change in leadership, to be honest with you,'' said Payton, who enticed Williams to New Orleans after he had spent one lost season as Jacksonville's defensive coordinator and assistant head coach. "I just thought it was time for a change. In our industry, it's the head coach, the quarterback and the two coordinators who can affect real change, right?

"We needed something. Obviously Gregg's not afraid to pressure, with either zone pressure or man pressure. But some of the tougher looks we've gotten from him over the years were just coverage looks, with four-man rushes.''

Change and new looks are everywhere on the NFL coaching landscape this year. By my count, there are 28 new coordinators in the league this season, with 23 of the NFL's 32 teams losing at least one coordinator since the start of the 2008 season. That's a remarkable amount of turnover in a short span, and it has resulted in more ongoing makeover projects on more offenses and defenses than any time in recent memory.

And I'm not sure any of those new coordinators are sitting on a bigger potential gold mine than Williams is in New Orleans, where six of the Saints' eight losses last season were by a combined 18 points. New Orleans has the AFC East and NFC East on its schedule this season, so nothing's going to come easily, but if Williams' defense can finally stay healthy, I like his chances to emerge as a real difference-maker among the league's new coordinators in 2009.

"There is talent here,'' Williams said. "I had [defensive tackle] Sedrick Ellis rated a notch ahead of Glenn Dorsey in last year's draft, because he's got a little bit more movement skills and you can get a little more pass rush out of him. He can be a dominate three-technique tackle in this league. And I think [ends] Charles Grant and Will Smith are really diamonds in the rough if we can keep them healthy. We have to get more out of our defensive ends, that's clear.

"But I like [middle linebacker] Jonathan Vilma a lot and always have. I'm about to put him in touch with [Redskins middle linebacker] London Fletcher so he can hear how things can be in my system. And our other linebackers, Scott Fujita and Scott Shanle, they remind me in how they play of two guys I had in Washington, Marcus Washington and Rocky McIntosh.''

Williams has added the services of first-round cornerback Malcolm Jenkins and fourth-round safety Chip Vaughn to the Saints beleaguered secondary, where veteran safety Darren Sharper and cornerback Jabari Greer have been signed to lend experience, and holdovers Randall Gay, Tracy Porter and Roman Harper return.

The new bodies are welcomed, but Williams' MO is to help set a new, feisty tone on defense wherever he has gone. "I specialize in flipping the culture and getting guys to play with urgency and intensity, but I really don't have to do that here,'' he said. "Because there's already a good culture and these guys do play with intensity. We've just got to keep people in front of us, and make sure [offenses] don't go over our heads for a bunch of yards all at once. We need to limit that.''

Easier said than done, of course. But everybody at this time of year has a plan for improvement, at least on paper. Here are capsule looks at 10 other new NFL coordinators who will start this season in the spotlight:

1. Bill Sheridan, Giants defensive coordinator -- Don't know much about Sheridan? Once upon a time we could have said the same thing about ex-Giants defensive coordinators Steve Spagnuolo and John Fox, and they're both NFL head coaches these days. Given the recent success of the Giants defense, don't expect him to try to re-invent the wheel in New York. But Sheridan, the Giants' linebackers coach the past four years, will differ from his predecessor, Spagnuolo, in one key respect: He'll call his defensive plays from the coaching booth, rather than the sidelines. Whatever works.

2. Scott Linehan, Lions offensive coordinator -- His 36-game tenure (11-25) as the Rams head coach ended disastrously last season, but there's a reason Linehan was sought after as an offensive coordinator by multiple teams this offseason: His work as an OC in Minnesota and Miami was pretty solid. He's a cerebral, thinking-man's coach, and that's a nice fit with new Lions head coach Jim Schwartz, who shares those traits. Linehan's biggest project is obvious. He gets to mold the early development of Detroit's No. 1 overall pick, quarterback Matthew Stafford.