Mark me down as a guy who spoke too soon. Yesterday I posted that the "Greg Ellis comments on Roy Williams" story was played-out. Au contraire. Seems that partly based on those comments Roy Williams was summoned to the principal’s office. OK, so it wasn’t totally the Ellis comments that got Roy a meeting with coaches Brian Stewart and Brett Maxie. He also missed two teaching sessions last week while working on plans for his Mother’s Day charity program. Combine those two items together and some at Valley Ranch were starting to question his commitment to the Cowboys. When you throw in some points made by those inside and outside the organization that Roy’s problems on the field stem less from talent deficiencies and more from preparation deficiencies, you got a situation where the air needed to be cleared. As usual in situations like this, everything is hunky-dory, at least on the surface.
"The communication was not there last year," Williams said. "We recognized the problem, and we talked about it. And we're going to move forward now. We have a better understanding."
Did you expect to hear anything else? I didn’t.
Now, as I speculated earlier, Roy wasn’t keen on Ellis dragging his name into the conversation. He realizes that Greg was trying to defend him, but he believes, like I did, that it didn’t really help the situation and that if Roy wants to complain about things he can handle that on his own behalf.
"I appreciate what Greg did, but at the same time, I'm a grown man, too, and I can speak for myself," said Williams, who still considers Ellis a friend. "If I want to be heard, I will be heard."
That was my major issue with Greg’s comments. Let Roy speak for himself. Then again, maybe Roy shouldn’t speak at all if he’s going to say stuff like the following.
"I'm tired about worrying about the fans," Williams said. "The fans are only around when things are good. I want supporters. At the end of the day, we're human beings, too. Everything can't be perfect, and you can't let your emotions rule over you being a human being. It gets to a point where you are abusing who you really are as a fan."
Yikes. First, Roy has taken on the media and blamed them for writing poisonous things about his play, now he’s taking on the fans. That’s a sure-fire losing combination and Roy should be smarter than that.
Here’s the bottom-line though; just play like you did in the first couple of years in the league and all will be forgiven. We know that Roy is not a good cover-safety, but playing intimidating defense with big hits, turnovers and plays behind the line of scrimmage was a good trade-off. Last year, we didn’t see that. Only Roy’s run-support was decent from last year and while that’s important, we expect more from Roy Williams.
