Gregg Williams’ absence: St. Louis Rams need collective effort to accelerate – NFL News
Defensive coordinator, Gregg Williams’ absence after receiving an indefinite ban from the National Football League (NFL), has come as a serious blow for the St. Louis Rams, who had just hired the coach, but were unable to avail his services.
With Williams out of the picture, Rams have started their offseason workout programme and there is no defensive coordinator to tell the players what to do.
Following Williams’ suspension, Rams decided against bringing his replacement and when head coach, Jeff Fisher, announced his complete coaching staff, it came to no one’s surprise to see the vacant position of defensive coordinator.
Fisher has already said that he trusts his coaching staff and he himself is up for taking an active role than planned in the team’s offseason activities and training activities.
At the moment, all the members of coaching staff are working collectively to train the team’s defensive unit, expecting the players to get acquainted with the conditions and play their due role to increase the output of this collective effort.
"You're hearing stuff from a couple different people, but they're all speaking the same language," middle linebacker James Laurinaitis said.
He added:
"People have either been brought up in this defence or have played in variations of it. You get bits and pieces from everybody."
Rams’ assistant head coach, Dave McGinnis, and secondary coach, Chuck Cecil, have served under Fisher as his defensive coordinators in different times of their careers.
Fisher is expected to rely more on these coaches, but the players have not yet been told about who is going to fill in Williams’ shoes as far as training of the players is concerned.
Fisher thinks that it will not be a problem for his coaching staff to train the defensive squad. He said:
"You know, it's gone smooth and the staff has done a great job adjusting. So, things are going fine. For obvious reasons, I'll be a little more involved than I had planned, but that's OK."
Meanwhile, Rams’ quarterback, Sam Bradford, has also said that he is expecting his defence to perform better in the next season. He also said that he was not aware that Williams was running a bounty programme for which he was suspended by the league.
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