Cleveland Browns: Brian Daboll to get interview, reviews are mixed

The Cleveland Browns requested an interview with Buffalo Bills offensive coordinator Brian Daboll. He may just be a wildcard option in this coaching search.

News surfaced last night that the Cleveland Browns requested an interview with Buffalo Bills offensive coordinator Brian Daboll. On the surface, Daboll’s numbers in Buffalo are not all that spectacular.

Daboll has led the Bills offense this season to 19.6 points per game and 330.2 yards per game of total offense.

But news out of Buffalo says that Daboll is well-respected within the locker room and knows how to lead young men. He’s also done a pretty darn good job of turning Josh Allen into a serviceable quarterback with limited weapons around him.

This seems to go against everything we heard about Daboll from his time in Cleveland as offensive coordinator under Eric Mangini. Former Browns quarterback Colt McCoy apparently took some heavy verbal abuse from Daboll during his rookie season. Here is an example of this from a 2011 Michael Silver piece:

"Several Browns recalled a meeting early in the 2010 season in which Daboll told McCoy, “I just watched [tape of] your last college game, and you were terrible. What the hell were you throwing out there? That was one of the worst games I’ve ever seen. Why the [expletive] did we draft you?”"

But that was a long time ago. And Daboll has bounced around a bit spending time with some very good coaching staffs with the New England Patriots from 2014-2016 and then moved down south with Nick Saban and Alabama in 2017.

Spending time with winning programs may have helped Daboll become more of a respected and well-liked coach that we hear he is in Buffalo. Daboll is still young at the age of 44 and already has won five Super Bowl rings from his two separate tenures served with New England.

Daboll certainly should not be Jimmy and Dee Haslam’s top choice to become head coach of the Cleveland Browns. But if the search goes the way of 2013 and 2014 where the Browns struck out on all of its top choices then you may hear Daboll’s name surface as a legitimate candidate for the position.

And let’s face it Browns fans, would you be surprised after all these coaching and front office changes that the Haslam’s would miss out on all of their top choices again?