The Play that Symbolizes Freddie Kitchens' Tenure as Head Coach
The 4th-and-1 call that had Baker Mayfield sneak to the right against the Denver Broncos, ultimately being called short encapsulated so much of Freddie Kitchens' tenure as the head coach of the Cleveland Browns. He followed up with this terrible habit of throwing a challenge flag in a vain attempt to try to win an unwinnable argument. It looked like it was enough and maybe it should have been, but it wasn't the team's best shot for the task at hand and came down to a judgment made by someone else.
Throwing the challenge flag felt like the last option for someone with no other recourse. Not moving onto the next play. Not showing the confidence to be able to get the ball back. Not focusing on what comes next. Effectively saying everything comes down to this one call and if it doesn't work, the game is lost. It's a red flag when a white one would feel more appropriate.
It wasn't just that play. It wasn't just that game. That game felt like every game the Browns have lost this season that's been close. There's that moment when Kitchens goes all in on a call based on the notion that throwing a challenge flag will somehow fix what didn't go right on the play. He disregards the likelihood of winning simply because it feels like a big moment in the game and ends up throwing away resources; a challenge and more importantly a timeout. All when the plan of attack didn't seem all that great in the first place. It all looks desperate. Weak.
And the Browns seem to share the same level of resilience as Kitchens does after these situations. Not coming together and acting as a team, but instead looking like a group that needed one particular call to go their way for them to have hope. Playing desperately without an understanding of the situation and making things worse as a result. Forcing a play on offense or missing assignments and getting gashed on defense going for broke when they just need to execute and play smart football.
Instead of marshaling the defense to rally to make a big stop or get the offense ready for the next possession, Kitchens waits in limbo, engaging in a futile argument with officials waiting for them to tell him they were wrong on a play, at times not being even able to see the critical issue being reviewed. As the interim offensive coordinator, this isn't who Kitchens was last year, the guy the Browns hired to be their head coach.
Last year, it felt like Kitchens would come up with a plan to find holes in the defense and get the offense to exploit them. It didn't always work, but there always seemed to be a continuous effort to evolve the offensive strategy over the course of the game. This season, Kitchens doesn't appear to be doing that and doesn't appear to be delegating it either. Instead, he constantly appears to feel aggrieved by the officials, fighting the last battle rather than focusing on the next one, with the weight of the world on his shoulders.
Instead of finding ways to get his best players in position to make plays, Kitchens is coming up with plays that feature a guy that was just signed off the street that week. And that was part of his charm last year, but when the Browns brought in Odell Beckham, the logical assumption was that he would figure out how to maximize him with Baker Mayfield. Using that same ability to find ways to make role players and bit actors to shine instead to get a superstar perform at a high level.
Not all of this is on Kitchens and his staff. Mayfield and Beckham have had their own individual issues that have held them back at points. But far too often, Kitchens doesn't appear to be the solution either. When they find plays that work, it feels random, accidental as opposed to a designed play concept that is repeatable. With few exceptions like that RPO mesh concept that has a slant attached, there is little the Browns do consistently in the passing game.
Maybe it gets better from here. Maybe Kitchens can evolve and his team will perform better. But at this point, it just may come too late to matter.
