Post Columnist In 2008: Gregg Williams Understands Humility. Post Columnist In 2012: Gregg Williams Showed Remarkable Hubris In 2008.

Mike Wise is a sports columnist for the Washington Post, which means he has to write about bad teams and bad executives and bad coaches and bad players. (He's perhaps best known around these parts for a high-profile Twitter stunt in 2010, in which he made up news about Ben Roethlisberger's impending suspension.) And when one writes for a living about terrible sports, one is presumably bound to double back on one's work at one point or another. All that said, it shouldn't be this obvious.

Here's Wise in January 2008, writing about the head coaching vacancy that eventually went to Jim Zorn (emphasis ours):

Gregg Williams is the best candidate to coach this team—not Bill Cowher or Pete Carroll or any other prominent name thrown about by misguided souls who believe Daniel Snyder's only interest is glamour boys in headsets. ... The right and unanimous pick should be Williams, the passionate (read: a little insane) defensive boss whose hair-trigger, bull-terrier ways have been tamed and has now been tempered with the diplomacy required of a head coach. ... Gregg Williams has to be the next coach. He's hungry and now understands humility. He is only waiting for someone to believe in him again, the way he already believes in himself, and the belief here is Snyder feels that way.

And here's Wise last week (again, emphasis ours):

One of the most illuminating moments in Gregg Williams's NFL career of controlled mayhem happened when he was interviewing to become Joe Gibbs's replacement as head coach of the Washington Redskins in January 2008. From Daniel Snyder's Potomac mansion, he texted a reporter how great the all-day interview was going, intimating that he expected to be given the job perhaps that day by Snyder and his right-hand man, Vinny Cerrato.

Beyond showing remarkable hubris—and incredible ignorance about a head-coaching job he was never going to get—the anecdote said everything about Williams: He thought more of himself than others thought of him and he believed deeply that the force of his own personality could trump all the black marks and bad-character references against him.

Cool burn, Wise, but people don't go from humble to hubristic in, like, three days. Not even when they're part of NFL scandals four years after the fact.

Hat tip to Sam.