Gregg Williams is Not the Anti-Christ

Did you hear? Former Saints defensive coordinator Gregg Williams killed a woman in the park. Yeah, right after he robbed a bank and stole a little girl’s leukemia insurance payment.

Oh wait, he just created a bounty system?

No one is excusing what Gregg Williams did, not me, not fans — no one. Gregg Williams is not the Anti-Christ. Gregg Williams is not the reaper, he’s not Jack the Ripper reincarnate.

He’s just a dumb ex-jock turned NFL coach. And he’s not the only one.

Williams stated years ago that being called a jock is one of the worst insults he could be told. He wants to be more then that, have more to his legacy. But it’s now his fault that he will forever be remembered for this bounty gate scandal. Gregg Williams could literally discover the cure for cancer and AIDS, bring world peace and solve the meaning of life and people would still claim he’s trying to compensate for what he did.

The biggest insult should be the he’s being crucified for an unsuccessful bounty system. The whole idea was to motivate the defense to take players out and win games. The Saints could have gotten to the second round of the playoffs without the bounty system and no one’s career was significantly altered because of it the bounties.

What he did was instruct his defensive players to hit offensive players hard, aggressive and very close to the moral line.

But it’s become Frankenstein. It’s a mob mentality and everyone who doesn’t want to seem aligned to Williams is grabbing a pitch fork and torch because ESPN is telling them to, and local talk radio is telling them they need to.

No one is excusing what Gregg Williams did, but they’re also exploiting every little thing to try and earn 15 minutes of fame and dish their opinion on it. The damning audio tapes (which fail to provide video footage of “Williams pointing to chin/ribs/ect”) came out at just the perfect time for those stoking the coals to now torch Williams at the stake.

It’s all contextual. Read the transcripts of what he said. Near the end, Williams goes way overboard and pumps his testosterone up way too much when he makes it seems as though he wants Michael Crabtree’s ACL to be a target.

If you believe for one second that when Williams said that he wants the 49ers coaches and fans to be rocked that he was implying that his players should bum rush the sidelines and go Pacers-Pistons in the NFC Divisional Playoff game, you need to put down the syringe full of kool aid and roll down your sleeve.

Williams is an idiot, we get that. He’s not, however, Lucifer. He’s an overly aggressive NFL coordinator who went too far with what he said.

Is Alex Smith going to miss the 2012 season because he actually got decapitated? Is Frank Gore’s brain so damaged from the abuse that he’s now going to need to be tube fed the rest of his life?

No, but from the way the Ashely Fox’s and Chris Kulwe’s of the world are talking about this you’d think Williams was the new head of Al-Qaeda.

Do you understand the coordination and choreography that would be involved in half the injuries people are implying that the Saints were going to carry out would take? It’s all contextual at this point. A picture before of a Saints player tackling someone at his ankles was football, now people want it used as evidence in possible assault cases.

Aqib Talib tackled Peirre Thomas at the ankles last season in the Superdome, the exact same way that so many photos of Saints players are doing that have no been published. Talib was making a football tackle to win a game (not that the chances were very good last season), but Roman Harper was committing an assault?

Let’s all calm down, take deep breaths and act civilized. No one was murdered. No one’s career ended. If you honestly want to say that Kurt Warner would still be playing if he handed been laid out (in a play we all showed our buddies then next day bragging about a good hit) then go watch The Masters please.

If you think Gregg Williams shouldn’t coach anymore, please take my tickets to the Australian Open and watch Roger Federer.

Williams is a moron, he gives football and it’s image a bad name and a bad face. Ask anyone in the NFL, ex-player or current, and they’ll tell you 90-95 percent of the Williams Tapes was your typical rah-rah football speech. Former Minnesota Viking Pete Bercich said so on sports talk radio and players have been silently saying so as well.

But this is some serious 1600’s surf going on. It’s witch hunt post finding the witch. It’s a crucifixion and it shouldn’t be taking place on the level it is. Gregg Williams didn’t end anyone’s career despite the buzz words being tossed around. That’s an assumption and a dangerous one; if Williams was going to end someone’s career he’d have done it if he was really doing it for as long as he has been.

Plain and simple.

Williams may have gone over the top with his rhetoric, but if you think for an instant that Jonathan Villma was seriously going to go out there and take his former college teammate and friend Frank Gore and snap his spine over his knee like a twig then you’re reading way to far into this. You’re feeding a machine of popularity. It’s popular to hate Gregg Williams right now and anyone who says otherwise must be a mistress demon working for him in his ranks of ghouls.

I hate the Saints, I hate that defense and when I have my Bucs fan cap on everything about the Saints makes me seethe.

This situation has become so out of hand by outside media forces that it’s now come to a Buccaneers writer to defend Williams. He’s in the division you’d think the guys he’d want to hurt the most were Josh Freeman, Julio Jones, Cam Newton.

Where’s the bounties on them? Actual threats to the Saints postseason bid.

Why wasn’t Aaron Rodgers a bag of bloodied and broken bones after the season opener? The Packers were the defending champs, the team with the biggest target on their backs.

How come Marshawn Lynch destroyed the Saints in the Wild Card a season ago? If all the reports of Williams being a soul collector are true, why did the Saints use to a team that didn’t even have a winning record for most of that season?

It’s a crucifixion and to say otherwise is a lie. Everyone is over-doing it, taking this whole situation and it’s fallout over the top not unlike the way Williams went a few steps too far in his speech.

No one is excusing what Williams did, he should not have had a bounty system in New Orleans. He should not had lied to the NFL on numerous occasions about it’s existence. He should not have gone over the top with his speech before the playoff game. But he’s not burning bibles, he’s not blowing himself up on the Gaza Strip and he’s not molesting children.

So let’s stop treating him that way. Let’s just treat him the way he should be — like a dumb jock.