DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Pure Football Forum Kitchen's not worried about job security.

Reasons have been given. You just don't want to hear them.

Is it leaking? A lot of it looks like speculation to me.

Agreed. Most of it appears to be the good ol' Plain Dealer trying to light a firestorm of public opinion, but with little to no substance.

I'll say it again

If Kitchens can go 8-8 or 9-7 I would be ok giving him another year IF he is forced to hand over play calling duties to an OC.

Kitchens will have enough on his plate as Head Coach. Its pretty clear though, Kitchens is in way over his head being the OC & The Head Coach.

He either needs to give up the play calling, or we move on. Its pretty simple.

Well, I mean as long as you would be okay with it and all.

Of course We would be better off hiring Ron Rivera and reuniting him with Steve Wilks as those 2 built a D that got the Panthers to a Super Bowl.

Then we can fix our Line and be ready next year. Rivera is a very good coach, and he don't put up with BS either. He is exactly what this organization needs.

Good luck holding your breath on that one.

When has an owner or GM demanding their coach to do certain things such as give up play calling ever panned out?

I mean if you're going that route just fire him.

Browns only have Arizona and Cincinnati and Baltimore on the schedule remaining, and only have to win 2 to get to 8-8.
Cinn, and Ariz are teams the Browns should beat, because of better record, and the Ravens are a team the Browns have already beat,
So if your measure to support keeping Freddie is only 8-8 then that's not too high of a bar.

I think more attention needs to be payed to what got them to start out 2-6 in the first place, and what happened in game #1, they had 20 weeks to prepare for that one.

By this point, does it really matter what they do at Head Coach, I mean we've been through so many scnearios,

I'll stay consistent, personally I wish they had stayed with Pettine, who'd be ending his 7th year,
and I think Gregg Williams seemed good to end, last year.

I supported the idea of Gregg Williams staying on.

Some folks treat these two words as equal and synonymous. They are not. What I have been hearing and reading is speculation. Trying to fire up controversy with hearsay and supposition is both wrong and common. "'Tis the season! Lame, but the PD seems OK with it.

Go, Browns!

I agree. Media BS is a real thing.

That said, I feel we (the Browns, not the fans) do kinda deserve it this year.

Freddie needs to win out or be fired.

I doubt Dorsey will fire him if he goes 8-8 though.

Dorsey is the chessmaster.

I think Freddie is a one year HC, and calling plays so he can go OC somewhere else.

And someone better is coming in the new year.

I think it's been the plan all along.

So it was Dorsey's plan (using your idea) to waste this year completely?

That really makes no sense whatsoever.

At this point, I still think Freddie is here next year.

From everything I'm reading it's 50/50.

And honestly like I keep saying it's all about Baker. If the organization is committed to him you have to fire Freddie. If they are unsure about Baker, give Freddie another year and see if they can both figure it out. Mayfield has had serious regression this year under Freddie. Other players have as well.

I'm curious which other players you are thinking....

Lets set Freddie aside for a moment .. What are the feelings on kepping Monken or Wilks ??

Ogunjobi, Higgins, Randall, Ward.

Just guys we counted on. No big deal. There's more but that's off the top of my head.

Not sure I understand your twisted way of thinking.

I don't think Baker factors in to any decision on Kitchens.

It wasn't hard to understand nor was it twisted.

It is if you blame Freddie for Bakers decline in accuracy and poor decisions in throwing int's. Sometimes people expect responsibility to be given to the one making the mistakes.

Sure Freddie is making his fair share of mistakes. But he isn't standing in the pocket reading the D. He isn't the one going through the progressions. He isn't the one making the decision on where to throw the ball and he isn't the one throwing the rock.

Sophomore slumps aren't that uncommon. When you decide to blame the coach for the shortcomings of your QB is when people people have a problem with it. Especially when it's the exact same coach everyone was giving credit for knowing how to use Baker last season.

I wonder if we can go back in time and do the following:

a) Retain Gregg Williams as head coach.
b) Retain Freddie as offensive coordinator and let him build on what we were doing last year, when we were using Haley's scheme.
c) Keep Zeitler; use our 1 and 3 to bolster our offensive tackles, or other positions as BPA might dictate.
d) Keep building on what our receivers had learned and improved on at the end of the season, without adding a player who you have to force the ball to to keep happy.

I wonder where we would be had we just followed that path. I mean it's easy to blame Freddie for where we are now, and he has made his share of mistakes, but the situation he is in now is totally different than what it was last year.

It's like hiring a qualified head coach but failed GM as lead executive, or hiring a glorified QB coach to be the head coach. It's not really their fault when they fail at something they were never up to in the first place.. the blame is mainly on the people who put them in that situation in the first place.

edit: to add, I'm kind of on the fence about Freddie right now. Don't really like keeping him, don't really like moving on from him after one season either. Maybe these next few weeks will provide more clarity.

People keep repeating it was Haley's scheme. But if so, why did that scheme suck so bad when Haley was here? Then suddenly, it's like someone sprinkled fairy dust on it and it worked like magic?

OBJ has been injured since before the season started. Claiming you have to feed him to keep him happy is pure conjecture. Carrying out that thought..... Would you want a talented WR who was happy not getting the ball when he seemed open quite a bit?

When it comes to keeping Gregg Williams as HC and Freddie as OC, that was my preference.

Haley was the one who made the run offense work for the first time since a long long time. He was a great OC, IMHO.

And nobody sprinkled anything, we just fired Hue Jackson.

I have never been a fan of Air Raid offense - so I don't think I can give a valuable defense of Monken. But we don't know if this is Freddies O, Monkens O, or a combo of both, so to be fair - its hard to say on him.

Wilkes, I would say that I have seen enough. I really dislike the 4-2 - as teams run on us with ease. Once a back gets past the LOS he seems to go for 10 yards every time (I know its not every time, I am being a little over exaggerated , but its not good).

I would say there a few games early that I thought the def looked spectacular, against the RAMS mainly. But later on we learned that the RAMS are just very bad on the road, and not that special after all. So I would be ok with getting him outta here and replacing him.

Our offense was garbage when Haley called the plays, and the second he and hue were outta here the offense soared. Lets not get revisionist history now.

If it was me - I still don't retain Gregg. a lot players didn't respect him - you cant have that.

He had good qualities yes, but I think the negatives outweighed the bad.

I bring in Arians and keep Freddie as OC. Let Arians groom Freddie and work side by side on the leadership sides of things.

As far as the trade goes for OBJ, ehhhh. Peppers is decent, Zietler hasn't done much in NY as that kid has been getting killed behind their line. I still think you make that deal. I think with a better offense gameplan and better structure in the facility - you would see a completely 180 on this offense.

This is fine if you believe the coach has no impact on the play of the players.

I think Wilks has done a pretty good job with the defense this season considering the injuries and all the "regressions."

A lot better defense than we had to put up with last season.

About Haley and Hue:

The main idea was to continue the scheme and verbiage that Baker had learned since entering the league so he could build off of that.

Baker and the rest of the offense appeared to be very comfortable with it toward the end of the season so I don't see why there was this undying need to change it? Especially for this merge of Freddie's offense (where did this even come from? He never had his own scheme.. was it from Bruce Arians? If so, why didn't we just hire him?) and Monken's. We should have saw these issues from a mile away.

As for why the offense took off after Haley, that surely had more to do with getting Hue out of there than it did Haley. And sure enough, Hue went on to ruin another AFC North team two weeks later, and they still haven't recovered.

Idk, I dont see how losing to how many undrafted rookie QBs is pretty good. And its not like the beat us 6-3, they moved the ball with ease at times, and made big plays against us. Pittsburgh made an adjustment at halftime and lit us up moving forward. I think Wilkes defense schedule is weak, allows way too many run plays and just is not that good.

Depends on what you call garbage... 0-16 team, tied with Pitt the first game, then lost to NO by 3, then won to the Jets, lost by 3 to Oakland, won to the Ravens, then lost to the Chargers and Bucs by 3.

Meanwhile he left with the Browns being on of the top 10 running offense in the NFL, and IMHO the decline in the Offense was more due to Hue's interference than Haley.

Haley wanted to develop Baker and lean on the Running game, which I agree was the best way. Fans didn't think so... that's why he has such a bad rep here.

He also wanted Carlos Hyde starting in front of Chubb, the best RB in the NFL, and as soon as he left our offense took off, by all accounts. Sorry, you have no leg to stand on here.

And Carlos Hyde was doing a good job and the OL was doing a good job.. so what is your point?

I'm sure Baker would be a much better QB right now if he had sit and develop,like Haley was doing.

Not saying Todd is a mastermind O guru, but was very competent.

We sucked when Haley and Hue were here. Freddie made the thing work. History is there for all to see despite this gibberish.

According to you Freddie used the same playbook to win games in the second half of the season that the same O scheme sucked at in the fist half of the season.

Even first grade math blows that theiry out of the water.

Wilkes has been disappointing at times (and that's an understatement when you're talking about not blitzing a QB taking his first NFL snaps), but I think he's done a pretty good job overall. I think he's had to deal with a lot in terms of missing starters throughout the year. Our secondary held up remarkably well earlier in the season down their top 2 corners (and usually a safety or 2).
That said, the run defense has been real disappointing, and I was just expecting more big plays overall from them. Ward has been injured, but he's also taken a little bit of a step back from last year. Randall hasn't had the same impact on the field despite being twice the headcase. The defensive line has been decent as far as pressuring the QB, but not as good as I expected, and not good enough to make up the for the run D performance.
I think Wilkes maybe needs a little smack upside the head, so to speak... but that's it. I wouldn't mind seeing what we can do with a whopping 2 consecutive offseasons under the same coordinator, but letting him know he's expected to delivery big plays aplenty.

Monken I'm less happy with. There's plenty of mystery surrounding him and what he actually does (bad and good) for the team. I'm not a fan of his preferred offense for us right now, and I wouldn't be able to make any sort of educated guess on whether he's willing or able to mold a new offense that actually fits our key guys.
My opinion of Monken can't be shared without mentioning Kitchens. Honestly, based on what we (don't) know regarding the inner workings and construction of the offense, I don't think we can hold one or the other accountable without implicating both. I would hope Dorsey knows the true architect of that abortion of an offense we trotted out there in week 1. I hate recycling coaches, especially ones that had a very light resume coming in (meaning we knew there would be a significant learning curve), but Kitchens has done and said some truly dumb stuff.
I'm starting to lean towards keeping him, but there's gotta be some sort of tangible change to help prevent the same things from happening next season. Trouble is, what would that be? I don't think you can take playcalling away from him because the main reason he got the job was because of his work with the offense last year. IMO, all that does is take you back to the question, "Why is Freddie the HC?".

I understand. Twisted minds understand twisted thinking.

Like I said, I don't think Baker has anything to with the ultimate decision on Kitchens. I clearly don't think that if we are going forward with Baker, which we are, means we will dump Kitchens nor do I think if we are unsure about Baker we would keep them both.

It wasnt wasted because Freddie got to attempt to learn some coaching skills, and the team is still being assembled/gaining experience.

And next year we get the coach Dorsey really wanted from the beginning.
Sometimes what you want isnt available the second you want it.


This is my tinfoil hat theory and I am sticking with it.