Cleveland Browns News: Can Gregg Williams be the coach long term?
By Randy Gurzi
Gregg Williams was full of confidence in his first press conference as Cleveland Browns head coach. Could this end up being for more than 8 games though?
The Cleveland Browns had their first press conference with Gregg Williams as the man in charge. While he has the word ‘interim’ in his title, he already comes across with more of a take-charge demeanor than the man who has been sitting there recently. Although to Williams’ credit, he doesn’t want to talk about the past in Cleveland. So we won’t either.
What we will talk about is the future and whether or not Williams has one in Cleveland. With most of us already looking at the next wave of potential head coaches, Williams is claiming he’s turned down multiple offers since last holding the title for the Buffalo Bills.
While that may be exaggerated, Williams does have a point about his credibility as a head coach. He’s been around long enough and surely learned since his 17-31 tenure in Buffalo. With that being said, could he do enough in the next eight games to earn the job full time?
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It may be too early to ask that, but Williams will tell you he can do it. That and more can be found in today’s Daily Dawg Tags.
Cleveland Browns News
"“Since I left Buffalo, I’ve had 11 letters sent in to interview for head coaching jobs, and all of them behind the scenes I have, four of them I didn’t even have to show up, just sign the contract and come,” Williams said."
Williams has made many remarks like this, including one during ‘Hard Knocks’ where he said he turned down seven jobs to join the Browns. He’s a man who believes in himself. If the players buy in, things could get interesting in the offseason.
"“As a player, we didn’t really get a sense of it,’’ Bitonio said. “At least for me, there was never any fighting on the field or anything like that. It was just business as usual. Todd ran the offensive meetings. Coach Jackson would sit in on them, but he was never really a voice in them. He ran his team meetings and had his input on the field if something looked off, but there was never any discord that we noticed as players.”"
Maybe Joel Bitonio is right and the Browns coaching staff did a good job hiding their feud. Or maybe he was too busy to notice it, because listening to press conferences, it was pretty obvious those two weren’t on the same page.
Baker Mayfield and Co. give Cleveland Browns hope amid turmoil – Judy Battista, NFL.com
"Mayfield said he has never been through anything like this — he has also never lost three games in a row — and he hasn’t been in Cleveland long enough to say whether the last few days would qualify as his “welcome to Cleveland” moment. Given the recent history of the Browns — linebacker Christian Kirksey helpfully counted that interim head coach Gregg Williams is his third head coach in five years here — it is tempting to assume that Mayfield will get a lot more Cleveland moments in the future"
Mayfield keeps saying the right things and as bad as all the mess around him is, this could be a huge test of his mentality as a leader. Mayfield and the other youngsters can prove a lot in the coming weeks.
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