Gregg Williams will have another tall order to fill in his second season as Jets defensive coordinator.
Not only did the team trade All-Pro safety Jamal Adams, but star inside linebacker C.J. Mosley also opted out of the 2020 season because of concerns related to the coronavirus pandemic. Williams will once again work with less talent than initially expected only a year after playing most of the season without Mosley and Avery Williamson.
But Williams did well with a limited roster last year. The Jets finished second in run defense and seventh in yards allowed. They went on a 7-2 run at the end of the 2019 season that was largely fueled by the defense.
Williamson, for one, isn’t worried about Williams’ ability to run the defense without his best players. Even as he recovers from his ACL injury, Williamson is confident the defense will perform.
“I hate to see Jamal go and C.J. opt-out, but at the end of the day we’ve still got some talented guys that play those positions,” Williamson said Wednesday. “I feel like Gregg Williams is going to put guys in good positions. He’s just going to coach the hell out of them.”
Adam Gase agreed with the idea that Williams’ coaching won’t falter. He credits Williams’ ability to scheme around a player’s strength and versatility, as well as his ability to create multiple looks on defense.
“The beauty part about what Gregg does on defense is, with the amount of personnel groupings he has, he has a ton of flexibility to give a lot of guys playing time,” Gase said. “I think that will be beneficial to us.”
Williams’ creativity will be his biggest asset this year. His skill as a coach will certainly help, but so will his past experience coaching defenses that lost talented players. Williams has been an NFL coach or coordinator for 22 years, and he’s had to work with less before.
With that in mind, we thought it would be wise to look back at four other times Williams lost his best defensive players for an extended period of time.
Browns LB Christian Kirksey, 2018
Kirksey missed nine games for the Brown in 2018 and was placed on injured reserve for the final six games with a hamstring injury. Williams, recently promoted from defensive coordinator to interim head coach, was now without one of his leading tacklers.
Kirksey had tallied the most tackles by a Browns player over the previous two seasons, but Williams coached around the loss and the Browns actually played well at the end of the season. They went 4-2 behind an energized offense, though their defense actually allowed more points during that stretch than during the 10 weeks before.
Rams LB Alec Ogletree & DE Robert Quinn, 2015
In his first season as Rams defensive coordinator, Williams lost Ogletree to a broken fibula after Week 12. It was a big blow to the Rams defense considering Ogletree led the team with 230 tackles in the previous two seasons.
The Rams, who went 2-2 with Ogletree, finished the season 5-7. They actually gave up fewer points without Ogletree than with him, but their run defense suffered greatly without their star linebacker. The Rams allowed 131.5 rushing yards over the final 12 games of the season without Ogletree. Williams had also lost defensive end Robert Quinn for eight games that year, who had a combined 30 sacks in the previous two seasons.
Saints LB Jonathan Vilma, 2011
Williams turned around the Saints defense when Sean Payton hired him in 2009, and a lot of that was thanks to former Jets linebacker Jonathan Vilma. However, Williams didn’t have Vilma for five games in 2011 because of a knee injury, including a stretch from Weeks 8-12. Vilma had averaged 115.6 tackles per season the previous three years, but he finished with only 54 tackles in 2011.
The Saints still produced a fantastic 13-3 season, but the defense looked considerably worse in 2011, going from seventh to 13th in points allowed and from fourth to 24th in yards allowed. Over that three-game span without Vilma, Williams’ defense averaged 464.3 yards allowed – almost 100 yards more than their season-long average.
The next year, of course, the NFL suspended Williams indefinitely – for what ended up being 11 months – for his role in the infamous BountyGate scandal, which Vilma allegedly played a large role in as a player.
Washington LB LaVar Arrington, 2004
Arrington hit the peak of his career heading into the 2004 season after his third consecutive Pro Bowl, but it all came crashing down in 2004 in Williams’ first season as Washington’s defensive coordinator. Arrington missed 12 games in the middle of the season after undergoing arthroscopic knee surgery.
Washington replaced Arrington with Lemar Marshall, who had only tallied 10 tackles in 30 games in two seasons without an NFL start. The defense obviously suffered without Arrington, who had averaged 92.5 combined tackles and 8.5 sacks over the previous two seasons. Washington went 3-9 without its star linebacker and allowed 241.3 yards per game.
