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The Jets and the Gregg Williams Gamble

Rick Scuteri/Associated Press

After a 4-12 season, the Jets were expected to overhaul their staff. But few expected the team to land perhaps the most controversial figure in the N.F.L. coaching ranks.

Enter Gregg Williams, the Jets’ new defensive coordinator, whose credentials include a Super Bowl ring with the New Orleans Saints in 2009; a surprisingly positive run as the interim coach of the Cleveland Browns this season; and, not to be forgotten, a role as the face of one of the ugliest scandals to tarnish the image of the N.F.L. in the last decade.

For the Jets, mired in one of their trademark periods of borderline irrelevance, he has been brought in to reform an undisciplined defense and counterbalance Adam Gase, the newly hired coach, who at 40 is one of the league’s youngest, most innovative offensive minds.