DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Pure Football Forum Freddie Kitchens..what was a crowning achievement before this year?

I do not find our team perfect but I find them “likeable”. Maybe you should try to find a more “likeable” team. Maybe one without a “dumbass” for a coach too.

Hey, Vers will be the first one defending him when everyone else calls for his head.

Our coach isn’t a dumbass. Not all that complicated. Hopefully no one is calling for his head for a long time.

Maybe. But for a team within your division? C'mon, man.

Hey, don't discount just how powerful a motivator spite can be and the price people are willing to pay for the principle of it. When my 11 year old decides to show how much like her mother she is, I can take her phone, cut the wi-fi and threaten to disrupt the communications grid and her response is akin to "Don't threaten me with a good time" lol

Scouts,the Titans employ scouts.
Perhaps one or two were at those practices.

j/c:

--The Titans didn't need to talk to Indy's coaches. Freddie's comments and the Brown's reactions were in several media outlets.

--keith, you have a big mouth. I didn't call Freddie a "dumbass." I said he sounded like one when he was asking who said that when he already had commented on Butler saying it. That was stupid. And frankly, keith......I'm sick of your insults. And don't you dare tell me who to root for.

So let me get this straight. He is not a dumbass, he just sounds like a dumbass. That’s what I call a distinction without a difference. And I can tell you anything I dang well please. Put it in file 13 for all I care.

Wait. You started the fight and then have a problem when I defend myself? That was a dumb comment by Freddie. Dude already addressed Brown's comments and then he says I don't know who is making these comments. What?

And yeah, keith.......you can say anything you damn well please. But, then again, I should be allowed to defend myself. No?

You can do and say dumb things. Doesn't make you dumb. It's not that hard to understand.

Any type or background can prove successful. Give it time. He will either prove to be a good HC or not, only time will tell. But he was certainly qualified.

All this trash talk coming from the Titans they sure didn't show much heart the last two weeks losing to teams without thier starting QB. I wish we had another shot at them this season to be honest.

j/c:

Freddie Kitchens on giving up the play calling: ‘That’s not even being considered'

https://www.cleveland.com/browns/2019/09...considered.html

By Mary Kay Cabot, cleveland.com

BEREA, Ohio -- Browns coach Freddie Kitchens said Monday he’s not planning to hand the play-calling duties over to offensive coordinator Todd Monken.

"That’s not even being considered,'' he said, a day after the Browns lost 20-13 to the Rams to fall to 1-2.

Asked why he wouldn’t hand it over to Monken for a week to see if it gets better, he said, “It’s me.”

He said if it fails, it falls on him.

He acknowledged that "some of these situations, they’re new for me. I’ll get better for this team and the team will get better.''

Asked about how Monken is involved in the offense, he said, "this is 100% the Cleveland Browns offense. We’re not going to start with that.''

He added, “We’re going to be fine. I promise you that.”

He said being head coach in addition to the offensive play caller "has nothing to do with me calling better plays'' or game planning during the week.

Ill give him credit, he wont throw Monken under the bus. But its clearly Monkens offense hes calling.

Well Kitchens is dumber than I thought he was. I actually thought he was smarter than this. The guy is in over his head.

Im telling you, any less than 9 wins and both Dorsey and Kitchens are in serious jeopardy. Dorsey is the one who picked Kitchens over Willaims, Dorsey is the one who assured Haslam Baker Mayfield is the guy, it was Dorsey who has spent all this money and all these high profile trades to get what? This absolute garbage.

for ***** sake, Kitchens called a damn draw play on 4th and 9, WTH was he doing!? Was he trying to set up for a field goal? Doesn't he know you don't get 5 downs in football. I agree with Rex Ryan that was the DUMBEST call I have ever seen in the NFL and I have been watching NFL Football since 88, its was more than a boneheaded call, its was just a completely stupid moronic call, It shows Kitchens to be an absolute dunce!

Todd Monken had the leagues 3rd ranked O last year in Tampa as a Offensive Coordinator. Todd Monken would call a better game than Kitchens, Freddie is an AWFUL play caller, he needs to get his head out of his arse and hand over the play calling duties to his OC and focus on managing the team. If your not going to delegate, why bother hiring the guy in the 1st place.

Even Monken, as much as I hate the Air Raid would have ran the ball with Chubb down there with 1st goal at the 4 with 3 timeouts, even Monken isn't "that stupid".

Mayfields poor play and Kitchen's god awful play calling have lost us two games. We won't 5 games with Kitchen's play calling if the 1st 3 games are any indication, the guy has no feel for the flow of the game.

Kitchens will be one and done if he doesn't swallow his damn pride and relinquish his play calling over to his OC...I know he has painted himself in a corner, if the O takes off after handing it to Monken it proves he doesn't know what he is doing...Him and Monken were at odds in the early camp and preseason for a reason, that reason being seen clearly on Sundays...you can't blame any of this on Monken, Kitchens is just not a good play caller, has no feel for the flow of the game. Guy is in over his head.

In terms of the draw play, I still believe he thought it was 3rd down ... I mean, nobody can be that dumb can they?

If they were legit running circles around us, their offense sure as hell didn't show it.

IIRC that quote was from the Titans game a few weeks ago

I look at it like this, both Freddie and Baker have now taken the blame. They've identified the areas they need o work on. So now we let them work on those areas.

Uh oh, didn't Hue make a couple of promises he couldn't keep?

He added, “We’re going to be fine. I promise you that.”

I said before Ego will do him in. Not a single person would blame him in conceding the duties. He’d probably even be applauded for putting team ahead of his ego and buy himself some time

j/c:

Did anyone listen to this? Dude sounds shell-shocked.

Look for Cleveland Browns coach Freddie Kitchens to let it rip against the Ravens -- because he knows

https://www.cleveland.com/browns/2019/09...e-he-knows.html

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Cleveland Browns coach Freddie Kitchens promised the wishbone last season, and everyone thought he was joking. Then he delivered the wishbone for three plays in a win over the Atlanta Falcons.

The Browns need Wishbone Freddie back. I think you might see him when the 1-2 Browns head to Baltimore next week. Because this Freddie Kitchens isn’t doing right by himself, his offense or his quarterback.

Kitchens set a high bar last season with his second-half play-calling that lit a fire under this franchise, jumpstarted the career of Baker Mayfield and earned a running backs coach who had never even called plays before the chance to lead a team picked to make the playoffs. What got Kitchens hired in January is getting him excoriated in September after another stagnant offensive effort in a 20-13 loss to the Los Angeles Rams on Sunday night.

You’re sick of it. I think Kitchens is, too.

As Jarvis Landry exited the locker room Sunday, he stopped and told his coach that this is still going to be a helluva team. Kitchens promised Landry he’d put him in a better position to make plays next week, and to forget everything else.

For Kitchens, it’s about remembering who he was.

I think it’s possible that Kitchens has called plays through three games the way he thinks the head coach of a playoff team with Odell Beckham, a franchise quarterback and a workhorse running back is supposed to call plays. Kitchens stuck with his Dawg Pound sweatshirt as sideline attire, but underneath, he put himself in a straitjacket of additional talent and expectations.

Wishbone Freddie? With OBJ? Preposterous. But no more. Kitchens has to dance with the one that brought him, when through three games, he hasn’t been dancing at all.

At some point, we’re going to find out if the last eight games of 2018 was a representation of Kitchens’ offensive acumen or whether the rest of the assistants helped prop up a play caller who was rolling against a collection of ho-hum defenses. Kitchens was ticked in the preseason when former offensive line coach Bob Wylie implied as much.

But three games in, that’s what anyone who remembers those comments is wondering -- was there truth to them?

There’s only one thing Kitchens can do to quiet those thoughts: Get back to Wishbone Freddie, to Let It Rip Freddie, to Earned This Job Freddie. Get back to creative, rhythmic, fun offense. To winning offense. Get back to an offense that accentuates the best of Mayfield, instead of too many deep drops that lead to wild, unplanned and usually ineffective scrambles.

I think Kitchens can do it. I can envision him standing at a podium in December after a playoff-clinching win and asking, “Remember when y’all doubted me?” We should all look forward to that -- let’s have Kitchens set every current doubt on fire and rub the ashes in our faces. But he has to do it now. He has to change.

I think he will. I think this is a line in the sand. Week 4, at Baltimore, Old Freddie returns.

I pushed Kitchens in his postgame news conference Sunday with an array of questions about the play calling. He accepted every bit of blame, in a way that isn’t my favorite move by a coach. It’s the kind of over-the-top blame acceptance that can be be admired for protecting players but eventually can seem dismissive.

“He can’t take all the heat for us," Beckham said later in the locker room. “He can’t take all the blame. I won’t let him take all the blame.”

But at the end of the news conference, I asked about some of the up-tempo offense the Browns used successfully on one scoring drive Sunday night. Whenever the Browns do that, getting to the line and keeping a defense on the defensive, it seems to fit Mayfield. Quick snap, quick thoughts, quick hits. Why can’t the Browns do more of that?

“We did it against Baltimore last year the last game of the year,” Kitchens said. "Yeah, it’s probably coming for them, but I don’t know that yet. I have not started looking at them. We feel very comfortable doing that. We’ll see. We felt like we had them on the ropes a little bit with a couple of those drives, and we just wanted to keep moving the ball.”

On the ropes? Remember when the Browns did that a lot? You remember, and Kitchens does, too. If he recalls going up-tempo against the Ravens in Week 17, he recalls the rest of what he did last season. Kitchens said repeatedly to put the blame on him, but I told him it really wasn’t about blame. It was about an offense with clear talent not maximizing it, for whatever reason.

He can’t think this offense, which has scored 13, 23 and 13 points after averaging 23.8 points in the second half last season, is living up to its talent level.

“We have a lot of talent. That doesn’t mean anything. Other teams have talent," Kitchens said. “We have to do the things that when we have the opportunity to make the plays, we have to make the plays. I have to do a better a better job of getting those guys into situations where they’re in the situation to make the play. The talent is great, but still, it doesn’t mean anything. I’ve said that from the beginning.”

Kitchens admitted to a specific play-calling error Sunday, when he called four unsuccessful passes from the 5-yard line in the final minute. The first play had a run option, but the Rams’ coverage made it clear the pass option was the right call. Kitchens said he was kicking himself in the rear end for not calling at least one run, and it should have been on second down, when that play call didn’t have a run option as part of it.

That sparked a worry in my mind, to hear a coach right after a game realizing the mistake he’d made minutes earlier. Is it possible that Kitchens has too much going on -- calling the plays and running a team -- to realize that in the moment?

“I should have called more of a direct run," Kitchen said. "That’s all I will say.”

Kitchens for now doesn’t want to entertain the idea of changing the play-calling operation ... like giving those duties to offensive coordinator Todd Monken. But I think he will change how he thinks about his own play calls.

What happened, I asked, to that offense of a year ago? What’s missing?

“I wouldn’t say anything is missing," Kitchens said. "It takes time to develop offensively. We kind of hit the ground running last year because we had been through eight games already so we know what we were doing. I would say, I have to do a better job during the course of the week of putting these guys in better situations and then on game day. If you’re looking to blame somebody, blame me. Do not blame any of our players. Do not blame any of our other coaches. Just blame me because I can take it. Just blame me.

"Go write your article and say that I messed the game up. Go write your article and say that it’s my fault that things are not looking like it did last year, because it is.”

What’s missing is the play calls of a year ago. That’s not only it, and I know some people think there’s too much of a play calling focus when the bigger issue might be real Mayfield regression. But I think Mayfield looking less sure of himself stems from the play calls. That and the fact that he might not trust his tackles, which leads to him bailing out of the pocket when he doesn’t have to.

But hear me out on this:

Kitchens was looking at me and answering my question when he said go write your article. This is the article. I can tell you Kitchens didn’t have a problem with the questions. But I think he has the same problem with the results.

You’re in for a week of angst and strong reactions. The fact is that the Browns are in second place in the AFC North and one game out of the wild card, and they just had four shots from the 5-yard line to tie the game in the final minute against a Super Bowl team.

Give them the opening schedule of the Buffalo Bills -- Jets, Giants (still with Eli Manning) and the Bengals -- and the Browns might be 3-0, too. So it’s too early to bail on Kitchens as a play caller, or to bail on anything else about this team or this offense. But it’s reasonable to be on alert.

Anticipate change Sunday. If we’re having this same discussion after Week 5, then maybe start to assume the change won’t, or can’t , come.

For now, look for Wishbone Freddie. Head Coach Freddie knows he needs him.

Did Doug Lesmiserable write this trash?

I didn’t watch the entire presser, but I’d really prefer if he’d not use the words battled lol

It wasn't just what he said. It was his voice. His demeanor. His body language. It was like he was completely overwhelmed by a shocking event. I worry that he isn't going to make it.

I don't think Freddie was ready....sorry guys and gals.

The one thing that really helped turn things around last year was a quick reduction in the penalties....the undisciplined team we had under Hue quickly changed under Williams. Players don't like him, why? Because he gave them crap about being stupid?

Not going to turn this into a Williams vs Freddie thread. But, this team looks ALOT like Hue's undisciplined product on the field. How many procedural penalties did we have last night for illegal shifts? I think five? Don't the coaches know how many players must be set before the snap? (I am by no means an expert on the subject but I don't make millions playing or coaching this game) When they are practicing these things during the week SHOULDN'T THE COACHES BE SAYING you can't do that in practice? This team seems poorly coached and that is one Freddie.

D played their butts off last night!!! Hmmm, this was our second string and they shut down the Rams? Maaayyybeee they should be our first string? Just saying....DB's made some major plays to give us a chance....

Ha! Omg, I saw this while on my phone and responded to it. LOL!

I have been saying that, but not has commented. After the penalty was declined I think he thought it was a replay of the down (only if he would have challenged and won though). He most def thought it was 3rd IMO.

I was wondering the same thing. I don't know the answer, but either way, it's not a good look from Freddie.

I can appreciate that opinion, but its still early. I think Dorsey has even commented that this is still a work in progress. He will have a leash (at least 2 seasons).

ITs not looking good - I admit that. And I was a FIRM supporter of Freddie and had his back. I will take my lumps on him if I am wrong.

But I don't see him being a guy that will not adjust what is not working. He will get it right, I still have faith, even though I am extremely frustrated with him as well.

I was not trying to insinuate that he should be fired. I hope it did not come across that way. Hell, I'll probably be defending him [hope I don't have to] when others are calling for his head. I was just struck by his presence. His voice was hoarse, his body language was off, gulping water while in the middle of an answer, clipped sentences, etc He looked and sounded like someone who just witnessed a horrific plane crash or something like that.

Gotcha, I could have just read it that way.

I think last year was a honeymoon. Everything went SO WELL when he took over the Offense, and then the talent we brought in - how could it be much more difficult? [sarcasm]

I don't think hes the type of guy that likes the press [ no excuse, that's now part of the gig], and I think hes a straight shooter that now has to be very careful of what he says. I think those gulps of water etc are him trying to calm himself. He wants to scream "I am jacked! I am frustrated! I am pee'd off!" But knows he cant, and its wearying on him having to be so controlled. Hes a fiery guy, he doenst like having to have his church hat on.

Not giving him a pass by any means - just maybe a different perspective.

I can def. see the concern from what you are seeing. And again - I am speculating and giving him the benefit of the doubt. You very well could be right. I am hoping you are wrong.

To me, he sounds pissed off at himself.

That’d be a good place to start, yes. He deserves a lot of blame and needs to improve across the board ... and so do our offensive players across the board

I know you don't. You've been clear on that. I wasn't all gaga about Freddie being named the HC. Gosh, remember why we did that (allegedly)? He was this offensive genius that would've been hired away if we didn't lock him down (that was part of the chatter on here, at least)... Looking back on that... ugh....
That said, we made that decision, and we have to stick to it. We hired a guy that had roughly 1/2 of a season calling plays under his belt, and we hired him with the understanding that he would retain play-calling. Between that and his overall experience, we signed up for a longer learning curve at the HC position than if we went with someone with previous HC experience. It's silly to hire a guy with the resume that Kitchens has and then expect perfection. He's gotta take his lumps and grow into the role. We knew this when we hired him, so we gotta stick with it.

Good read. I hope he is not so full of himself that he can't learn from his own shortfall. This offense as called and run behind this line is not achieving well. How what is needed or immediately clear after films and a few snappy interviews but eludes you during the game is preposterous. The blown opportunity point-blank on the goal line with four passes is beyond odd.

Fix the O, play mix, BM, your coaching, whatever. But fix something this week and improve the rest. Penalties must be on that list.

j/c

I certainly feel that Freddie deserves his fair share of the blame. But I don't think it should all be heaped on him. Something is up with Mayfield too. He no longer steps up in the pocket and delivers. Instead he scrambles out of the pocket and isn't seeing the open guy. Both of them look like someone else invaded their bodies and took over.

The problem isn't Freddie Kitchens, the problem is Baker Mayfield. Baker Mayfield is NOT a good QB, and at this juncture I doubt he ever will be. Going purely by the film, even Derek Anderson was a better QB..

The film says, Baker Mayfield is a one read QB..look back at last year, we ran lots of max protect, only 2-3 guys running routes, most of Baker's big plays and passes came off the 1st read. If the 1st read isn't there, he runs/rolls to the right and throws.

He done this last year, and he is doing it now. This isn't college, NFL Defensive Coordinators adjust, No one in that division at Oklahoma plays D, all the games are shootouts, all those D absolutely suck.

Mayfield isn't even able to go through simple progressions, show this kid man coverage pre-snap and then actually run zone and the kid is completely lost. The book is out on him....

Mayfield has a 1-18 record against teams with a winning record last year....1-18....let that sink in....He is ok at beating bad teams, nothing more.

an QBR in the 80's is for mediocre QB
An QBR in the 90's is where the good Qb are.

Look at last year and his sub 90 QB ratings against the Raiders, Ravens x2, Steelers, and Houston. His total rating is padded by high QBR against the Bengals 2 times, the Bucanners, and and Carolina...all teams that had terrible D last year.

Lets not forget his god awful 47% completion percentage and 52 QBR against the Chargers.

If the Browns were "Smart" and I use that term loosely because I don't really think Dorsey is all that smart, I think he is a good scout, but he is not a good GM when it comes to putting a team together. He has made very questionable decisions as of late, and brining in guys with character issues via the draft and FA.

If the Browns were "smart" however, they would package Baker Mayfield in a deal with the Carolina Panthers this off season for Cam Newton. Word is Newton relationship with Panthers ownership and FO has soured, and Mayfield still has some value so best to move the one read QB while he still has value...he is our Trent Richardson of QB.

We could work out a deal something like a 1st, and 3rd this year + Mayfield in return for Newton, a 4th, and swapping 5ths. the Panthers get Mayfield on a rookie deal, the Browns get Newton with 1 year left on his contract which we can easily sign a new deal. We then draft a QB in the 2nd rd of the draft and the kid is developed and rides the pine for a few years while we get high level of play from Newton.

Newton will be NFL MVP with Landry, OBJ, and Chud. With the talent we got, we got a 3 year window to win something, we don't have the luxary of time to hope Mayfield figures it out...I don't think he will.

He will do what he done in college, 1st read, if not there, scramble right and improvise hope someone gets open...the book is out, he is Trent Richardson playing QB, time to move on while we can still get value from him...we can take someone to the woodshed just like we did with Richardson, but we will have to do it before next season.

Call me the ultimate troll, whatever, but I have seen this story before. We would be smart to trade and move on.