Gregg Williams finally has Browns working toward the same goal

The change from the Cleveland Browns has been evident the past three weeks, even to the most casual of fans.

The Browns have shown a renewed energy in games, have been scoring points - 28 per game after averaging 21 through the season’s first eight games — and, best of all, the team has won two of its last three contests.

While he may not deserve all of the credit, interim head coach Gregg Williams has certainly made a difference since taking over after Hue Jackson was fired. One of the biggest changes has been Williams’ insistence that everyone work toward the same common goal, as center JC Tretter told clevelandbrowns.com:

“I think the discipline has been great. I think it is something that we desperately needed. I think that he has really reigned everybody in and gotten everybody focused on one single goal. I think his leadership has been very strong. He fires up the team. He has that personality. I think everybody knows that. I think he has just done a great job of really rallying the troops to one cause. I think you see that on Sundays.

“I just think that it is an expectation, and when the expectation of what you need to do every Sunday and not even just on Sundays but on Wednesday practices, on Thursday practices and on Friday’s, every day you come out and we get a goal of what you need to accomplish that day and what the message is. It makes it a lot easier to kind of understand what we are trying to get at each day. I think that is something that I think Gregg has done a really good job of.”

That is a refreshing change from the approach that Jackson took, where he spent his time in Cleveland seeking personal victories and looking out for himself around the clock. That left little time to get the team ready for what really matters, which is winning on Sundays.

Williams can be abrasive, as anyone who watched Hard Knocks over the summer knows, and it could be easy for his approach to coaching to wear on players over time. But he has quickly demonstrated how getting everyone to work together can pay dividends.

Which is something that Browns fans can all get behind.