DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Pure Football Forum Report: Browns plan to retain Freddie Kitchens 'barring a horrific collapse'

Fire Freddie. Fire Dorsey. Go after McCarthy. Promote Wolf to GM.


Problems solved.

stefanski was the guy everyone in Berea wanted, except for dorsey who "flexed his muscle" the same way Haslam did when everyone in Berea wanted McDermott and he flew to cincy to hire Hue without anyone knowing

The Green Bay Browns.

It worked for the Packers until it didn't. Getting anything to work before it doesn't would be fantastic.

Just a personal disconnect with the FK post-game interview. Or several.

We are 1-0 is thin and I tuned out. EARLY on in interview. He says he thought we were ready to play, but weren't. Takes blame for getting them ready and it has to be done better.

DISCONNECT: Get a clue. FK has trouble determining game readiness, but hasn't managed that. Hindsight is not a viable NFL lifestyle. Not sure we have a "going forward" metric he keeps mentioning. This is an effort to be objective on his behalf.

What progress have we seen? What problems are fixed? What will FK's success look like when it lands? Are we better after a season's work going into closing games? What are the very few "must achieve" goals for this season? How many coaches fit under Bus Freddy? How much more do we need to see of problems which don't get fixed?

Why with a rushing leader are we kicking field goals and failing? We need scores, TD's. The epitome of this offense.

To answer most of that: IMO, we are not better at anything this season. Heck, we don’t even see any consistency from week to week. We are ill-prepared, have zero heart, and don’t seem to have much of a plan.

It’s the worst coaching job I’ve seen here, and that’s saying something obviously

This is actually a remarkably and hilariously accurate take on the situation.

j/c...

A snippet from Zac Jackson's article after the game...

...Three and a half or so hours later, in the bottom level of State Farm Stadium, it just felt over for Freddie Kitchens. I’ve been around a few of these situations, and I know them. I know the body language. I know the search for answers. I know the coached-up words about continuing to fight, focusing only on what the coach and players control, worrying nothing about perceptions or opinions. Sadly, I could write the handbook. From experience, I know how to write coaching obituaries.

As I looked around the news conference room and visiting locker room here late Sunday afternoon, I saw too many familiar sights. There’s a look. It’s in the eyes of the support staff and the assistant coaches making the slow walk out of the locker room. They know. In some cases, they left other jobs for this, and their eyes and shoulders say they’re about to be back on the market....

Story of the season. It’s over now. It might get uglier next Sunday against the Ravens given the opponent and the circumstances. It officially ends in Cincinnati in two weeks. Leaving Arizona, it feels inevitable that Kitchens’ time on the job will end in the hours after that.

Saban
Swinney

Well written and explained by Zac Jackson ... we’re too used to it

PLEASE .. get an experienced, professional Head Coach !! No more On the Job Trainees.

I need to watch the game, as I was only able to listen... but if it looked how I think it looked (could run Yakety Sax as background music), then I can understand if the decision has been made to move on. From what I could hear via the radio call, Browns came out not only flat, but totally unprepared and unmotivated. On highlights, I saw our Dlinemen just going through motions and really not trying (just using them as an example).

I won't like getting rid of Freddie, but I can understand why.

I wish I could go back and listen to it. Donovan usually has a keen sense of what's going on.

If Baker has to have his hand held to be a leader that's a problem.

After 14 games. It doesn't feel or look like Freddie has learned anything. If the team played inspired against the Cards and looked like they wanted to stay in the hopes of looking like they are ready to change the culture then it would look better on Freddie.


Freddie himself said in the presser he didn't have the team ready to play. Why in the hell not ?

If we keep Freddie and leave the rest of the coaching staff in tact we will be talking about the same things next year. I don't like to keep changing HC and staff's but this is showing zero sign of straightening out. Freddie was a good gamble because of how last season ended but it isn't working out. I wasn't as optimistic as others and felt we wouldn't win any more than 9 games. If there was improvement I could understand keeping Freddie but we look no better now than we did game#1 and with the bickering going on it's actually worse. IMO we have to make a change.

After watching yesterdays game, I can't think of a single reason to try and make a case for Freddie to stay. I would love to be able to. I would have loved to have seen anything on either side of the ball to give me hope.

But I didn't see a solitary thing to hang my hat on.

I am usually one to keep the coach.

If we can somehow get Ron Rivera, I would dump Freddie. Aside from Rivera, I don't see anything else that makes enough sense.

j/c:

I wonder who will lead the coaching search this time around.

I think I have an idea who's going to have a much stronger voice. Maybe even some muscles to flex.

Coming from you, that's huge.

I wonder if the notion of a "total collapse" isn't expected against the Ravens.. I feel like the "we're with Freddie unless...." comment was said with full expectation that we lose to the Ravens by 30+ points and Dorsey has set the table for... this is the collapse we were talking about, he's out.

I've been preaching on the board for years about keeping coaching continuity. About how swapping out HCs and OCs year after year does nothing to help a young QB learn his craft. How it's impossible to establish an identity when you're switching out who's leading you, year after year. And why it's dumb to build a roster for one coach, and then swap him out with a guy who's going to want a new roster.

That said, I want Kitchens gone. Nothing I've seen this year leads me to believe that what we're seeing are just growing pains that we'll get figured out next year. Kitchens just looks like a guy that's completely in over his head, and doesn't even have the credentials to be an OC, let alone a HC. His job as a HC is to have the player prepared and disciplined, and despite the talent, we're one of the least prepared and disciplined teams in the league. His job as the OC was to retain the same kind of Offense that we saw making headway last year. Instead, the only thing we see that looks similar to last year are the stupid trick plays he inevitably tries a couple times a game. He has probably the best RB tandem in Chubb and Hunt, yet constantly runs empty backfield sets and leans heavily on a sophomore QB in a slump. Nothing he's done this year leads me to believe he'll be innovative or crafty down the road. He just continuously makes the same dumb mistakes over and over, he calls plays like a tilted poker player and constantly tries to force square pegs into round holes and wonders why it doesn't work.

Like I said in the poll thread, I don't get why Dorsey would want to keep him. The players have already quit on him, and he's making his own drafting ability look questionable. If he hangs onto him one more year, and we continue this trajectory, Dorsey is the one that's going to look like he has questionable decision making, and drafting ability.

I love keeping continuity when possible, but I fear the only thing we will be continuing next year will be the decline of Baker and everyone else on the roster.

Interesting thought, I would not be opposed.

Nerds don't have muscles...duh!

I'd say there's a good chance we find out that the Haslams pushed Freddie more than we think. Berea makes people go nuts. Some paranormal thingy going on.

JC

I hate to say it, but I think Freddie is damaged goods, and it's probably better that he goes before Baker becomes the same. There is a laundry list of "things that went wrong", many (if not most) of them NOT Freddie's fault, but when things go bad... this badly... it's hard for even a good tenured coach to survive. It leads to too many players losing confidence and respect for the "man in charge".

When I look at what I deem the biggest mistakes, they are usually the result of a "two-headed monster", and the other head is John Dorsey. They both bought into the "too much talent to fail" narrative and it led to a lot of terrible personnel decisions - with the roster as a whole and game day decisions.

I think the "on paper" talent led to a tough guy mentality from Freddie. That's all well and good when things are going well but exponentially bad when they are not. He marched around with his "if you ain't brown and orange" flag even though it didn't really apply to everyone. I'll use this example, NOT to endorse Hue as a great head coach, just to draw a correlation: I'll just pick two players - Higgins and Avery. Hue would go into psychiatrist mode with their discontent and try his best to get them pointed in the right direction... Freddie said "have a seat, you don't matter". Freddie thought that he had that political capital because of sheer talent, but the bottom line is, Freddie had never earned that. When things go sour, that leads to more discord and loss of respect... in a word - CANCER.

Analyzing this team and trying to address "what went wrong" is almost as hard as trying to find a fix for our political system. Every cancer is intertwined and codependent on other fostering diseases. It's easy for me to point at the beginning of the "stench", it started with the trades with the Giants. It was truly "subtraction by addition" even though it was all too easy to pat everyone on the head and say "HOF talent, duh".

It continued through a minicamp, training camp and preseason that did NOTHING to prepare the talent for the the actual games. Freddie, like everyone else came out like "deer in the headlights" and never made (or was too slow to) make the decisions to point the ship in the right direction.

By most standards, Freddie wasn't a terrible first-year head coach. Given the talent, arrogance, and inability to fix problems the - image of failure looms too large to save him... Expectations may have been his biggest enemy, his inability to adjust and meet them (by any stretch of the imagination) will earn him his walking papers.

yeah he does ... he kinda stays reserved but will drop little hints

I predict Kitchens will be fired today. Instead of the standard press conference, it will be Haslam.

A paragraph from Joe Posanski of The Athletic after yesterday's game....

It was a symphony of awfulness for Cleveland. It was reported that after the game ended, owner Jimmy Haslam stomped around angrily. That is interesting. There has already been a report that, while GM John Dorsey remains bullish on his hiring of Kitchens, Haslam is much more skeptical and was so even before the game. This makes you wonder who was behind the leaked vote of confidence, which makes you wonder if Haslam was was not thrilled with the report, which makes you wonder if the Browns are as dysfunctional as they have ever been.

Actually, we don’t have to wonder about that.

haslam has every right to be pissed...he put his trust in dorsey.. let him do his thing and so far he's proven to be just as incompetent a GM as we've had. Dorsey might have to sacrifice Kitchens to keep his job.

Hopefully Haslam.

I doubt Dorsey will hire a guy like McCarthy or Rivera who are probably going to want some say.

If it's Dorsey, another first time HC is likely or a retread nobody wants.

The cycle continues....

Dorsey is intimidated by intelligence.

Starting with the second week in November I saw some good signs. We defeated a playoff caliber team in the Bills. We went on to beat the Steelers, trounce Miami and a close loss in the rematch of the Steelers. Then we went on to beat the Bengals.

We didn't look great accomplishing these wins, but it seemed we were actually learning how to win no matter the optics of those games. It seemed many of our fans cared more about style points rather than the W's as fans continued to drone on even when we were winning games. It seemed, "how we won" was more important than actually winning was. I found that baffling. As we won, people were complaining about Chubb not running the ball enough. Even though he had the most carries of any RB in the NFL. Then the battle cry became, "It's not that he isn't running enough, it's when he's running". All the while we were actually winning those games.

But yesterday we saw a complete collapse. Our offense put up 17 points during the time the game actually meant something. The last TD was meaningless as both we and the Cards knew it.

The D simply rolled over and played dead. There was no heart in this team. The running game has been good, but you can't rely on your running game to win games for you if you allow your opponent to score 38 points.

Mayfield didn't have a terrible game yesterday. But we can't string together drives where we punch it in from the red zone. There just doesn't seem to be any finish there when it matters most. When you're playing for your last hope at a possible playoff birth and this is the product we see, that speaks volumes. And the volume is so loud it's making peoples ears bleed.

It never ceases to amaze me how people on this board drone on and on about how reporters spread rumors that are unsubstantiated and then turn around and do the exact same thing.

Miss Cleo, is that you? Long Island Medium maybe?

Today? Really caught me off guard with that one!

And who takes it over, Swami? My crystal ball is at the cleaners. No need to predict the future for this group the rest of the season. When it counted (more than once!), well, looked like a number of us could not be bothered.

Also....horrific collapse.....

like what, losing to Arizona, Baltimore and the Bengals? If I were a coach, I would try to beat Baltimore and unless we win, I'd bench all the starters for the Bengals game.

j/c

Here's the rub:

Most experienced head coaches that might be available have been losers or average at best somewhere else. Few have left their previous teams on top and those that have usually aren't ready to change that legacy.

Up and coming coordinators, college coaches, or wonder boys like Freddie
version 2018 are all just coin flip risks.

Neither of those 2 guys are coming here.
Someone that I had wanted to mention but skipper is Mike Priefer our ST coach.
He really improved the ST units and they always seem prepared to play