Will the Browns fire Freddie Kitchens?

Freddie Kitchens is only 1-2 on the year. Things have been less than stellar with him as head coach. Will the Cleveland Browns end up firing him?

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Expected to do big things in 2019, the Cleveland Browns have not followed through on their promise to be great through the first three games of the season. A lot of criticism has gone in the direction of two men: second-year starting quarterback Baker Mayfield and first-year head coach Freddie Kitchens. Mayfield is the franchise quarterback, but will Kitchens be around in 2020?

On this week’s episode of Stacking the Box, FanSided‘s Matt Verderame and Josh Hill, along with former NFL offensive lineman Geoff Schwartz ask the question if Kitchens will be anything more than a one-and-done NFL head coach in Cleveland (31:00).

“I think he’s been terrible, but I think he’s going to be there next year,” said Schwartz. “I can’t see [general manager John] Dorsey pulling the trigger quite yet, year one, first-time head coach.

Schwartz would go on to say that it’s been mostly bad with Kitchens as the head coach, arguing that Mayfield might have even regressed in year two in Kitchens’ offensive system. However, he feels that Kitchens will get another year or two to figure it out before he is potentially canned.

As for Verderame, “I’m going to say that he’s going to be gone after this year because I don’t think it’s going to be a Dorsey call, I think it’s going to be a Jimmy Haslam call.” That is not what you want to hear, Browns fans.

Haslam has been a meddler during his entire time as the owner of the Browns. He is also a huge booster at his alma mater at the University of Tennessee. Look at how that once-proud football team has done in the last decade. Haslam’s involvement in both is no coincidence.

“It’s never good when your head coach is a compromise,” said Verderame. He would point out that Kitchens was a compromise for their next head coach, as the Browns had wanted former Green Bay Packers head coach Mike McCarthy, but that didn’t work out for a few reasons. Interim head coach Gregg Williams was also considered for the role but was met with significant pushback.

Overall, the Browns can’t be happy with what they’ve seen out of the brief Kitchens era in Cleveland. One would expect the Browns would give him at least another year to right the ship, but Cleveland is Cleveland and we’ve seen a bunch of nonsensical things happen on the shores of Lake Erie since the professional football franchise came back into being in 1999.

Here are a few topics that were discussed on this week’s episode of Stacking the Box:

• Verderame on the New England Patriots’ hallucinogenic Gatorade (2:00)
• Can the Baltimore Ravens beat good teams (9:30)?
• The Minnesota Vikings won’t win a Super Bowl with Kirk Cousins (29:10)
• Things will get easier for the Oakland Raiders when they move to Las Vegas (37:47)

All this and more!

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