Mickles: Williams harsh, but effective

• By SHELDON MICKLES
• Advocate sportswriter
• Published: Jun 18, 2009

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Pierson Prioleau laughs when he thinks about what members of the New Orleans Saints defense must have thought when they met with new defensive coordinator Gregg Williams for the first time.

Prioleau, a safety who’s played seven of his 10 NFL seasons with Williams as his head coach or defensive coordinator, knew what was coming when Williams walked in.

“The first meeting of the year I call the ground zero meeting,” said Prioleau, who signed with the Saints in the spring. “It’s going to be a little harsh, but he means well. His message is it starts today and we build from the foundation up.”

Unlike Prioleau, Saints defensive end Bobby McCray had never played under Williams. He didn’t even know the man, save for a brief phone conversation, when Williams entered the room that day.

“When we sat down for that meeting, he let us have it,” McCray said with a laugh. “He really didn’t know us, but he didn’t hold back. If people looked out of shape, he let them know. He ripped everybody.”

It’s as low as it gets, a knowing Prioleau said, as basic as it can be.

“He gave nobody credit and told us there weren’t any starters,” McCray said. “From the time he walked in, he let us know. So right off the bat, we knew this guy wasn’t playing and we had to come ready to work every day.”

But instead of dreading it, the Saints embraced Williams’ philosophy that he’s honed in his two-decade tenure in the NFL. In fact, enthusiastic might be too soft a word to describe how they like Williams’ teaching.

His aggressive, attacking style and penchant for switching defenses could be what the doctor ordered for a unit ranked in the lower third of the NFL in total yards allowed the last two seasons.

“People talk about how he loves to blitz, and that’s real good for us,” McCray said. “He’s a great guy and he’s got a lot of packages and schemes for us. I think it’ll benefit our defense a lot.”

Prioleau said he likes Williams because he’s a straight shooter. He usually delivers on what he says he’s going to do, Prioleau said, something cornerback Tracy Porter learned.

“The first thing he said was we were going to play a new style of defense, and he would challenge us mentally as well as physically,” Porter said. “He said he would throw a lot of things at us, but most of all he was going to give us a higher level of intensity than we had before.

“That gets you excited and you want to play for him. To this day, he’s lived up to everything he said.”