Cleveland Browns: Do you really want Gregg Williams fired?

After all the good he has done in his three games at the helm, do Cleveland Browns fans really want to see Gregg Williams leave the team in 2019?

Perhaps fans mean well, but the excitement about possible new head coaches for the Cleveland Browns is directly proportional to the possibility that current Coach Gregg Williams will be fired. The “coaching Search” sounds like a nice, innocuous exercise, but make no mistake.

The Browns are hunting for someone in case they decide to fire Williams. He is the “interim coach,” but in reality, all coaches are “interim.” The label just means that the length of the contract is shorter and announces to the public that you’re interested in replacing the current Coach. The nature of the NFL is that you either win or you are fired. So it will be for Gregg Williams.

If Gregg Williams wins with the Browns, he will be a head coach in the NFL in 2019, either with the Browns or with some other team. Cleveland would have the inside track to sign him to a full-time “permanent” contract.

But if they don’t do it, he will certainly be offered jobs elsewhere. Jacksonville might be a great fit. Or perhaps the New York Jets or Tampa Bay Bucs. Or hey, the Cincinnati Bengals could be a good option because they are probably going to fire Marvin Lewis for bringing Hue “The Whisperer” Jackson back to Cincinnati.

There is no way that the rest of the NFL could fail to notice a winning performance from a coach in Cleveland. They have definitely noticed the mushroom cloud over the Cincinnati skyline from last Sundays 35-20 aerial bombardment of the Bengals.

Were it not for the fact that the Browns were obliged to keep the ball on the ground and eat up clock, Baker Mayfield may have thrown a few more touchdown passes.

By the way, the notion that “Bountygate” would prevent a team from signing him is hopelessly naive. Sean Payton came back from the scandal, and doubtless, Gregg Williams will continue to be fine as well. Gregg Williams is just as well respected in the rest of the NFL as he is in Cleveland. After all, NFL teams care about winning. Williams has one Super Bowl ring as DC for the Saints, and he nearly had a second with the Music City Miracle Titans. If he wins with the Browns the rest of the NFL will view him as an unconditional smash success.

There has been some noise that perhaps someone like Bruce Arians will become head coach and Williams will revert back to his defensive coordinator role for Arians. But can you think of a case in which a head coach has voluntarily accepted a demotion from the same team?

Perhaps sharp readers out there can think of a few additional cases, but only two cases come to mind. Mel Tucker went back to his DC role after having been the Interim coach for the Jacksonville Jaguars in 2011, and Harvey Johnson also became an assistant after having coached the Buffalo Bills in 1968.

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Sometimes dismissed head coaches get bumped up to the front office (rumor has it that this fate may be in store for Marvin Lewis), or get sent to temporary exile (Dave Campo comes to mind, since he came back as a Dallas Cowboy assistant a few years after they fired him). But these cases are quite rare. No, if Williams is denied the opportunity to be the head coach in 2019 for the Browns, he will in all likelihood accept a position from another team to be their Head Coach.

Who do you think would be better than Gregg Williams? We’ve already discussed the unlikely prospects for Bruce Arians, who has been battling health issues for a few years. No doubt, Arians is a terrific coach with a proven record of success, but is he suddenly healthy now? Let’s see his 40 yard dash time and powerlifting stats before we believe he is really able to return to the tough challenges of being an NFL head coach!

Another amazing suggestion is that the Browns should hire Lincoln Riley, currently the coach at Baker Mayfield’s Alma Mater, Oklahoma. If Riley is going to be a great Pro coach, he should be in demand for all NFL teams needing a new boss, not just one.

What the Browns absolutely do not need to do is to install a college offense to fix Baker Mayfield. Baker Mayfield is not broke, so don’t fix him! He is currently performing at a high level in the offense of Freddie Kitchens, Al Saunders, and Kenny Zampese. It’s working. Why should the Browns now dismantle that offense? The Big 12 offense absolutely does not translate to the NFL. Why not? Well, for one thing, the NFL employs cornerbacks and the Big 12 does not. Let’s get real, shall we?

There are always some ridiculous suggestions that someone like Bill Cowher is dying to coach the Browns. That’s not likely. If Cowher wanted to coach, he would be coaching already. Perhaps he could be bought like Jon Gruden was by the Oakland Raiders. However, how good of an idea is it to get a Coach who really doesn’t want to coach but is doing it mainly for an overwhelming amount of money? The desire to coach should really come from the heart, rather than the pocketbook.

Let us also not forget that the Browns do not always get their first choice for executive positions. This was made clear in 2014 when candidate after candidate turned down good offers from the Haslams until finally, Mike Pettine stepped up. He was about seventh on the Browns’ list, according to scuttlebutt.

More realistically, you could sign guys like Jeff Fisher, Rod Marinelli or Todd Bowles. Maybe one or both of the Harbaugh brothers will be job hunting soon.  Marvelous Marvin Lewis will also probably be available after this year, as suggested previously. Do any of those names ring your chimes?

The only way Williams can fail to generate offers to become a head coach in the NFL would be for him to fail miserably with the Browns. That’s not impossible, but it is going to be tough to do. Suddenly the Browns are a Top-5 rushing team with an exciting talented quarterback and wide receivers that have learned their roles.

They still have an aggressive defense led by Myles Garrett, Joe Schobert, and Denzel Ward. Williams is currently 2-1 and has the same number of wins as Hue Jackson had for the first half of the season. One more win and he will beat Jackson’s first-half-of-the-season record. With the Browns anything is possible, but it is hard to imagine how Williams can possibly screw up enough to not get offers for next season.

Perhaps John Dorsey may be tempted to hire a new coach if he has a special relationship with someone who becomes available even if Williams posts a winning record. That would be a ballsy move, but in such a case, Dorsey has to also find a new defensive coordinator.

But the most important reason for not firing Gregg Williams is that he is doing a good job. Not everything was Hue Jackson’s fault, but ‘The Whisperer’ made enough terrible decisions that he richly earned his 3-36-1 record. Coach Williams and his staff have brought some balance to the offense, reduced the sack toll on Mayfield and continued to play aggressive defense. They have also been able to have continuity with the same schemes on offense and defense. They are not starting over if they promote from inside.

There simply is not enough justification to want to fire Williams at this point. Hence the talk of all the exciting candidates for Head Coach needs to be tempered as long as the Browns are winning under Williams. It is not, not, not going to be possible to demote him if he winds up with a winning record under his interim gig.

Williams in all likelihood is our coach. If we have to have a new Coach in 2019, you have to assume Gregg will be gone. Who is the guy that is such a great coach that we can afford to just fire Gregg Williams in order to hire this new guy?

CLEVELAND BROWNS FANS, DO YOU REALLY WANT GREGG WILLIAMS FIRED?