Chomps
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- Mar 18, 2019
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Freddie Kitchens has never been a head coach before. Heck, he wasn’t an offensive coordinator for long.
And yes, he knows he was just gifted a talented roster, and high expectations, and will probably play a load of prime-time games for a franchise that hasn’t had a winning season since 2007. And he has to manage some big personalities, without
“I am scared to death of all those,” the Browns new coach said. “I mean, I really am. I don’t know how I’m going to deal with it. I really don’t know if I’m ready for this job. I really don’t, man.”
He was kidding.
“At least they think enough of you to [have] the expectations. But their expectations of us don’t change our expectations. So I don’t care if they thought we were going to be the last team in the league. Our expectations wouldn’t change. I don’t mind expectations. I’ve never seen a team end up in the Super Bowl that didn’t have those expectations. So if that’s your goal is to go to the Super Bowl, you better have those expectations.”
Kitchens has a down-home demeanor which disarms, and he is perfectly willing to embrace that as he sells his vision of the future for a team that hasn’t known success lately. But there’s still the small fact that he hasn’t done this job, much less done it well. But he denied that created added pressure for him.
“Pressure?” he said. “To me, pressure is waking up without a job, having a baby at home to feed, your wife just left, and you have no money in your pocket. So that’s pressure. I don’t think what we do is pressure.”
It was mentioned that sounded like a country-song lyric, and he grinned and replied: “Yeah, I listen to country music for a reason. Most of all those songs it seems like was written for me.”
And for the moment, at least, it’s still a song people can’t get enough of.